General Gaming Article |
- Bloomfield Takes on Skylake
- BenQ's XR3501 Has All the Right Curves
- Thermaltake Intros Core V1 Snow Mini ITX Chassis
- Newegg Daily Deals: Intel Core i7-4790, SanDisk 128GB SSD, and More!
- Lenovo Leapfrogs Apple to Lead Combined PC and Tablet Market
- Intel Adds 800GB Capacity Drive to SSD 750 Series
- Stop What You're Doing and Update Firefox
- Build It: Twice as Nice—Quietly Does It
| Posted: 07 Aug 2015 01:46 PM PDT The Past through TomorrowEarlier this week, we posted our review of Intel's newest processor, sixth-generation Core series, aka Skylake. While we were able to provide comparison points with more recent processors like the fourth-generation Haswell/Devil's Canyon and the fifth-generation Broadwell, that's as far back as we went. Truth is, we've cleared our labs of most hardware older than Haswell now—no surprise there, considering Haswell launched over two years ago. But, we also have PCs at our homes that sometimes aren't quite so up to date, and one of those is a dusty but still fully functional Nehalem (Bloomfield) system that's nearly seven years old. Yes, we're talking about a true first-generation Core i7 processor. The specific processor is an i7-965 Extreme Edition, nominally clocked at 3.2GHz but with the capacity to turbo up to 3.46GHz at stock. It's also running overclocked, though, at a steady 3.67GHz. That may not seem much compared to modern chips, but this is a 45nm part we're talking about. Since then, Intel has gone through two generations of 32nm parts, two generations of 22nm parts, and they've now released their second 14nm part. Wait a minute; didn't we just list six generations right there? How is it that Bloomfield is first-generation and Skylake is sixth-generation? For the CPU history buffs, it goes something like this: Nehalem is considered first generation, but that's lumping a bunch of chips into one big bag. The Nehalem family launched at 45nm with Bloomfield for consumers, and shortly thereafter as Nehalem EP for workstations and single socket servers; all of these used the LGA1366 socket. (There was also Nehalem EX for dual- and quad-socket servers, using a different socket.) Then there was a 32nm die shrink version codenamed Westmere EP/EX that also targeted servers and workstations, which later came out as a consumer chip with the codename of Gulftown, a 6-core/12-thread processor that also ran in LGA1366. Sandy Bridge was 32nm as well and moved to socket LGA1155, Ivy Bridge shrank to 22nm and also used LGA1155, Haswell was 22nm on LGA1150, and most recently Broadwell was 14nm on LGA1150. Depending on how you count, that's seven generations counting Skylake. But since we're talking about missing generations of Core processors, we should also mention Lynnfield, the "mainstream" offshoot of Nehalem that launched a year after Bloomfield, on socket LGA1156. That marked the split between Intel's mainstream and enthusiasts platforms, and they've been going their separate ways ever since. And who can forget the original Core Duo (Yonah) and Core 2 Duo (Merom and later Penryn), which is when Intel finally killed the Pentium 4 NetBurst architecture and kicked off their tick-tock strategy? By our count, somehow Intel conveniently left out several generations of Core processors—sort of the opposite of Microsoft and Windows 10, aka "No Number Nine Necessary". But moving on, we were talking about our old Bloomfield PC. At its launch, Bloomfield was the new high-end platform from Intel, with triple-channel DDR3 memory support. It was paired up with the X58 chipset (Northbridge), which provided 36 PCIe 1.1 lanes. Bloomfield/Nehalem also represented Intel's first ever integrated memory controller, which helped to reduce memory latency by moving the memory interface onto the same die as the CPU. There were limitations, of course: USB 2.0 support came via the ICH10 Southbridge, along with the SATA connections—which were limited to just 3Gb/s. USB 3.0 ports or SATA 6Gb/s ports required additional chipsets on the motherboard, or you could use a PCIe adapter card. In other words, by going back nearly seven years, we're seriously limiting the features offered by our test rig! But it's a testament to the quality of the old Bloomfield/X58 platform that we're still running it, and it actually continues to work quite well, all things considered. It's so old that we actually had to replace the motherboard's CMOS battery in order to avoid losing date/time and BIOS settings in the event of a power failure, but otherwise it's happily chugging along. In fact, Nehalem has done so well that even now, we still get people wondering if it's even worth the hassle to upgrade to a "more modern" platform. That brings us to the purpose of today's article. Some readers asked for it, and we're happy to accommodate them: Just how much faster is Skylake compared to a first-generation Bloomfield system? Many people purchased i7-920 processors and overclocked them to 3.6GHz (give or take), which basically matches the clocks on our i7-965. While we're here, we can also muse about where the industry is headed and what patterns are emerging, and hopefully relive a few good times during our stroll down memory lane. Here's the full list of specs for our Bloomfield and Skylake platforms.
Okay, full disclosure: This test system is my own old PC, and it's near and dear to my heart as I used it for work, gaming, and just about anything else I needed to do on a PC from 2009 up until about a year ago when I finally upgraded to Haswell. Now the PC is used by my wife (and children), not because I don't have anything faster for them, but because it has all her files and preferences, it's running properly, and she hasn't requested a change. If you're wondering, the GeForce GTX Titan X was installed purely for testing purposes; normally the PC has to "make do" with a GTX 770. Over its life, the system has gone from an HD 4870X2 to dual HD 5870 to dual HD 7970 cards, before I retired it from gaming use and put in the single GTX 770. Not a bad lifespan for a PC, and something I never would have done ten or twenty years ago when it seemed every two years brought enough of a performance boost to warrant an upgrade. Those were heady times…. Show me the money!
Those expecting first-generation Core to tuck its tail between its legs and go run and hide should find these results a bit sobering. Sure, Bloomfield isn't the fastest processor, but for less demanding use cases there's hardly any need to try to keep up with the Joneses. Skylake is clearly faster than the old i7-965, but particularly when you look at the i5-6600K stock results, it's really not that much faster. The i5-6600K is only 15 percent faster on average compared to Bloomfield at 3.67GHz, and even the i7-6700K is only 37 percent faster. If we toss in overclocking on Skylake, the gap widens to 39 percent for the i5-6600K at 4.6GHz and 61 percent for the i7-6700K at 4.7GHz, but there are plenty of cases where we aren't anywhere close to double the performance. If you're wondering why Bloomfield and X58 have managed to hang around for so long, look no further than the mainstream benchmarks like PCMark 8. Storage and graphics help Bloomfield stay relevant, and for these system wide benchmarks the difference between first- and sixth-generation Core is quite small. Bloomfield equipped with a modern GPU is actually able to beat Skylake (with overclocking) on the Home and Creative tests. No doubt the Titan X is helping here, as the Skylake system was tested using its integrated HD Graphics 530 for the above benchmarks. (For the record, PCMark 8 results on stock i7-7600K with Titan X are 4895 Home, 7598 Creative, and 5161 Work. No surprise that the Creative suite benefits the most.) But that's just it: Even an archaic PCIe 1.1 connection is apparently good enough for most single GPUs in 2015. That might sound shocking, but check out our gaming results.
Note: Average is the geometric mean of the nine tests, using (3DMark / 100). Here we're running the fastest single GPU on both platforms in order to make the processor (and chipset) the biggest bottleneck possible, and we're even running at a moderate resolution to further emphasize CPU performance. And yet, of the nine graphics tests, only three show more than a 10 percent improvement—and that includes the overclocked Skylake results! GTAV and Hitman: Absolution show the biggest gains from moving to a modern architecture, with an 18-28 percent boost in average frame rates, roughly matching what we saw earlier in generational CPU performance improvements; Metro: Last Light also shows a moderate improvement of 7-19 percent. Outside of those three, the performance is close enough to call it a draw—the average over the remaining six tests gives Skylake a meager 2-3 percent improvement over Bloomfield. In fact, there are even a few cases where Bloomfield posted slightly higher numbers than the i5-6600K. Oops! As if that's not damning enough, DirectX 12 is supposed to help further alleviate CPU bottlenecks for games, so that even a moderate processor can keep up with a faster graphics card. If that sounds unreasonable, consider for a moment that the CPU cores in both the PS4 and Xbox One are horribly under-powered compared to even Bloomfield. Just how under-powered are we talking? A quad-core A4-5000 AMD APU managed a result of 0.39 in the single-threaded Cinebench 11 test, and 1.5 in the multi-threaded test. Even with perfect scaling from clock speeds and cores (the Xbox One is eight cores clocked at 1.75GHz while the PS4 is eight cores clocked at 1.6GHz), those CPUs would only muster about a 3.5 score in the multi-threaded Cinebench 11.5 test—about half the CPU performance of Bloomfield. And yet these gaming consoles are still able to power some nice visuals, thanks to the low level access developers have to the hardware. DX12 provides all of that for Windows users, which means once we start seeing DX12 titles, Bloomfield may be even closer to Skylake in gaming performance—at least on DX12 enabled titles. The Bigger PictureThis isn't to say that we should forget about the past seven years of technological progress and stick with LGA1366, however. For one, efficiency is not a strong point of the old architecture. At idle, Skylake on our desktop is using just 39W at the wall (50W when overclocked); the Bloomfield system by comparison draws 131W idle. Under load, the story is similar: running Cinebench, Skylake is pulling 104W at stock on the i7 and 155W when overclocked; Bloomfield at 3.67GHz and a bit more than half the performance requires 249W—or put another way, i7-6700K delivers nearly four times the performance per watt. Part of that comes from LGA1366 being an "enthusiast platform" though—our Haswell-E test bed as another example idles at 110W, and running Cinebench (with a 4.2GHz overclock) pushes it to 234W; of course, Haswell-E does deliver more than twice the performance of i7-965 in this sort of workload. It's not just about power and efficiency either. While CPU performance of Skylake may not be a revolution compared to Bloomfield, there are plenty of other benefits. PCIe 3.0 offers four times the bandwidth per lane, and when paired with a fast NVMe SSD it can make even the fastest SATA SSD look mediocre. USB 3.1 is also showing up on most Z170 motherboards we've seen, providing up to 10Gbps connectivity compared to the 480Mbps of USB 2.0—and even USB 3.0 wasn't commonly found on X58 motherboards. That may not seem like a huge deal, but copying files to our old Bloomfield system from an SSD over USB proved to be quite painful, topping out at the expected 33MB/s of USB 2.0 compared to nearly ten times that rate when copying the files to the SSD from our Skylake build. (Our X58 board in theory has USB 3.0 support, but it never quite seemed to work properly when it comes to Of course no one is looking to buy a new Bloomfield PC today, but if you're already running such a system and you're not doing video editing or other CPU intensive work, the upgrade bug probably still isn't biting. Haswell was a good upgrade to Bloomfield back in the day, and for enthusiasts we've now had Sandy Bridge-E, Ivy Bridge-E, and Haswell-E. If none of those were sufficient reason to upgrade during the past five years, however, Skylake doesn't really change things relative to Haswell. There are new features that are worth having, but for mainstream users there are no "must have" items. Let's be clear: we love the speed of Haswell-E when it comes to video editing and other complex tasks; it's substantially faster than mainstream systems. There's no way we'd want to go back to Bloomfield for that sort of work. But when I asked my wife if she had any complaints with my old Bloomfield system, the answer, not surprisingly, was no. Sure, the fact that the system has an SSD helps, which is the first thing to upgrade on any system using conventional storage. With 500GB SSDs now priced well under $200, there's really no need to suffer with putting your OS on a hard drive. But until the motherboard or some other critical component actually goes belly up, she and many others like her will keep on plugging along with "outdated" hardware. On the one hand, this is sort of sad. We remember fondly the earlier days of the PC when performance was doubling every two years (sometimes less). The old 80386 launched at 12MHz, and within two years it was running at a lofty 33MHz. 80486 was just as good, starting at 20 and 25MHz in 1989 and finishing at 100MHz by 1994. The very first Pentiums were 60 and 66 MHz parts in 1993, with 233MHz models by 1997. (Those were also 15-17W parts, if you're wondering.) Even in the days of Pentium 4, we went from 1.4/1.5GHz parts in 2000 to 3.4GHz by 2004—still more than double the performance within a four year span. But that was the end of an era; starting with Core 2, clock speeds gave way to adding cores. Core 2 launched with 2.67GHz parts in 2006 and the fastest parts ended at 3.33GHz for dual-core and 3.2GHz for quad-core two years later. And that brings us back to Bloomfield, which launched in 2008. Here we are, Q3 2015, and over a variety of applications we're only seeing about a 30 percent improvement in overall performance. The Mobile Disruption and the Road AheadBut just because pure clock speeds and performance aren't shooting up doesn't mean we're not seeing some real improvements in other areas. At stock clocks, i7-6700K is around 30 percent faster than a moderately overclocked i7-965. There's something else that's also faster than i7-965: just about every quad-core i7 notebook CPU since Haswell. Yeah, let that sink in for a moment. The Acer V17 Nitro Black we recently tested manages around 20 percent better CPU performance than our old overclocked Bloomfield, and it idles at less than 15W with load power on CPU tasks measuring 75W (including the display). And for a lot of people, quad-core i7 notebooks are more powerful than they really need; a good Ultrabook is more portable, fast enough, and has great battery life. No wonder Intel and others have been focusing more on power efficiency for the past several generations than on raw performance. Desktops aren't going away any time soon, as there will be a certain market segment that always needs more performance, but they're just one of a variety of computing devices in today's technology saturated world. Laptops deliver all the computing power most people need on a day to day basis, and in turn plenty of people are increasingly using smartphones to do tasks that were traditionally handled by desktops. Ironically, the same people that would balk at spending $1,000 to upgrade their laptop or desktop to a modern system are often the first in line for a brand new $500 smartphone, complete with a two year contract. Where do we go from here? 14nm is just the tip of the iceberg; Intel still has plans for 10nm, 7nm, 5nm, and even 3nm. Even if we slow down to process updates every three or four years, we are fast approaching the true end of Moore's "Law". No one is quite sure where process technology will actually stop, but the size of a copper atom is 128pm and aluminum is 125pm, so that's a pretty hard limit, and likely we won't ever get that far due to quantum tunneling and other issues. That means the slowing down of computing demands may not actually be such a bad thing. Fifteen years ago, you rarely saw large businesses running PCs and laptops more than four years old; today, a high-end PC from seven years back can still deliver a good computing experience for most users. In another fifteen years, we may enter an era where computer purchases become more like cars: You could buy a new model and use it for 10 years or more before needing a replacement…unless you drop your smartphone and shatter the screen. "Sorry, dad; I totaled the computer." 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| BenQ's XR3501 Has All the Right Curves Posted: 07 Aug 2015 01:33 PM PDT Looking for a monitor that will help create a more immersive experience when playing games on the PC or console? Look no further than BenQ America's new curved monitor, the XR3501. Measuring 35 inches and featuring a curvature of 2,000R, the panel doesn't come cheap, costing a hefty $999. According to the specs, the new curved monitor has a 21:9 aspect ratio and a max resolution of 2560 x 1080. The panel also includes a typical contrast ratio of 2000:1, 178 degree viewing angles, a refresh rate of 144 Hz and a typical response time of 12ms (4ms GtG). On the ports front, the XR3501 provides two HDMI 1.4 ports, one DP! port, one miniDP port, audio in and out and a microphone jack. The panel also comes with proprietary features such as the Black eQualizer, which lightens dark areas on the screen without washing out the white levels. There's also ZeroFlicker that gets rid of flickering no matter the brightness level. "When combined with the device's built-in Low Blue Light modes, the monitor also successfully filters the exposure of emitted blue spectrum light — effectively reducing eye fatigue and elevating gaming performance to provide exceptional visual comfort, even during long hours of gaming or dynamic content viewing," the company said this week. BenQ's new monitor provides three exclusive gaming presets, the first of which is geared towards racing games. The other two are focused on first-person shooters, but the company does not explain what makes these two modes different from each other. According to BenQ, each setting is "fine-tuned" and actually used by professional gamers. Is BenQ's new curved display a bit pricey? The ideal setup would consist of three curved panels, but that would set gamers back $3K. The company said that the monitor was designed for the casual gamer "looking for a more enveloping gaming experience." However, we're not sure if casual gamers will dig the steep pricetag. The display is now shipping to retailers and online shops across North America. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thermaltake Intros Core V1 Snow Mini ITX Chassis Posted: 07 Aug 2015 01:24 PM PDT Thermaltake introduced on Friday the Core V1 Snow mini ITX chassis. The company said that the new chassis is built for high-end gaming systems, providing enough space for up to four HDDs or SSDs, power supplies up to 180mm, tower CPU coolers up to 140mm and cable management space of up to 80mm. According to the company, the case features two interchangeable side panels, a two-chamber design, a huge 200mm fan installed in the front and removable 2.5/3.5 inch drive device racks. Thermaltake said the upper chamber was designed for "cooling performance and efficiency" while the bottom chamber plays host to cable management and the power supply. "Symmetrical panels allow users to build the system with personality," Thermaltake said in its announcement. "Users can change the panels for the best viewing presentation or better cooling performance. A removable PSU dust filter and adjustable shockproof rubbers built in the bottom panel prolongs the PSU usage." The Core V1 Snow Edition includes a number of "mounting points" for installing air cooling units or liquid cooling systems. The specifications show that the front can accommodate 120mm or 140mm radiators or 120mm (x1) or 140mm (x1) fans. The case also comes with two optional 80mm "turbo" fans that can be installed at the back of the chassis. Finally, the new chassis provides two expansion slots that can accommodate GPU cards up to 250mm. On the front panel's side are two USB 3.0 ports, HD audio connections, the Reset button and the Power button. Available only in white, the overall dimensions of the new chassis are 10.9 x 10.2 x 12.4 inches. Unfortunately, the company did not provide pricing or availability in its announcement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Newegg Daily Deals: Intel Core i7-4790, SanDisk 128GB SSD, and More! Posted: 07 Aug 2015 11:23 AM PDT Top Deal: Uh oh, do you see what's happening? That's right, summer is coming to an end and pretty soon we'll be in the middle of the back-to-school season. Goodbye nice weather, pools, and vacations. But rather than pout and pound sand over the situation, you can turn it into a positive by building a new PC. Consider it a back-to-school gift to yourself. Skylake is here, and that's one option, as is today's top deal for an Intel Core i7-4790 Haswell Desktop Processor for $290 with free shipping (normally $310 - use coupon code: [EMCAWAV22]). It's a quad-core part with eight threads and 8MB of cache, and is clocked at 3.6GHz to 4GHz. Other Deals: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 16GB (2x8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4-19200) Memory for $105 with free shipping (normally $115 - use coupon code: [EMCAWAV34]) SanDisk 2.5-inch 128GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive for $55 with free shipping (normally $60 - use coupon code: [EMCAWAV84]) Thermaltake SMART M Series 850W Modular Power Supply for $81 with free shipping (normally $95 - use coupon code: [EMCAWAV37]; additional $30 Mail-in rebate) Battlefield 3 Premium Edition PC Game for $10 with $2 shipping (normally $20 - use coupon code: [EMCAWAV83]) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lenovo Leapfrogs Apple to Lead Combined PC and Tablet Market Posted: 07 Aug 2015 11:07 AM PDT King of the hill Lenovo's been the number one supplier of PCs (in terms of shipments) for several quarters now, having shoved aside Hewlett-Packard to take the top spot. However, that hasn't been the case (until now) if you talk to Canalys, which clumps tablets into the PC category. By considering tablet shipments when tallying up PC sales, Apple was able to hold the lead since the third quarter of 2014. That's because of its highly popular iPad line, which includes both 9.7-inch iPad slates (the latest of which is the iPad Air 2) and the smaller iPad mini. Well, even if you want to include tablets in the mix, Lenovo still leads the pack. According to Canalys, Lenovo shipped just shy of 16 million PCs (desktops, notebooks, and tablets combined), which is around 240,000 more than Apple. That gives Lenovo a 15 percent share of the market. The gap would be even bigger -- much bigger, in fact -- if discounting tablet sales. Canalys says Apple is "heavily reliant" on its iPad sales, which totaled 10.9 million units. That figure represents more than two-thirds -- 70 percent -- of Apple's total PC shipments in the second quarter of 2015. "These shipments have been falling year on year since peaking in Q4 2013. Apple remains exposed to the fortunes of the worldwide tablet market, which has experienced annual declines for three consecutive quarters," said Tim Coulling, Canalys Senior Analyst. Meanwhile, Lenovo enjoys almost 30 percent of the Chinese PC market and is growing its share in the U.S. Coulling added that Lenovo has a more diverse product portfolio than Apple and therefore is in a "stronger position" to lead the market. That's not to say it's been all smooth sailing for Lenovo. The company recently had to take steps to clear a build-up of inventory in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and earlier this year Lenovo came under fire for pre-loading the Superfish adware on some consumer PCs. According to Canalys, the global PC market fell 12 percent year-over-year to 109.2 million units in Q2 2015, with double-digit declines affecting desktop, notebook, and tablet shipments. However, Microsoft just launched Windows 10, and with early impressions being mostly positive, there could be an uptick in sales. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Intel Adds 800GB Capacity Drive to SSD 750 Series Posted: 07 Aug 2015 09:30 AM PDT Splitting the difference Intel has added a new capacity drive to its SSD 750 Series, one that slots right in between the existing 400GB and 1.2TB models. Like those two, the new 800GB capacity drive is a half-height PCI-E 3.0 x4 solution sporting 20nm multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory. The Intel SSD 750 Series is a high-performance line, though the 800GB model will be the slowest of the bunch. Don't confuse that to mean slow in general -- these drives offer far faster sequential read and write performance than SATA 6Gbps-based drives. Intel rates the 800GB model at up to 2,100MB/s for sequential reads and up to 800MB/s for sequential writes, along with random read and write performance of up to 420,000 IOPS and 210,000 IOPS, respectively. For the sake of comparison, the 400GB model boasts 2,200MB/s sequential reads, 900MB/s sequential writes, random reads of 430,000 IOPS, and random writes of 230,000 IOPS. As for the 1.2TB, not only is it the most capacious, it's also the fastest performing across the board with 2,400MB/s for sequential reads, 1,200MB/s for sequential writes, and random read and write performance of up to 440,000 IOPs and 290,000 IOPS, respectively. Check out our review of the 1.2TB model for more information. The downside to these drives is that they're pricey. Intel hasn't said how much the 800GB model will cost, though we spotted it on Newegg for $780. That's about in line with the price-per-gigabyte ratio of the other two models -- Newegg sells OEM versions of the 400GB for $380 and 1.2TB for $1,040. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stop What You're Doing and Update Firefox Posted: 07 Aug 2015 09:01 AM PDT Pesky Firefox bug Mozilla on Thursday announced that it rolled out security fixes for a bug in Firefox that was discovered by a user. What the user found was that an advertisement on a news site in Russia was able to take advantage of a vulnerability in Firefox to search for sensitive files on a user's PC and upload them to a server in Ukraine. The exploit involves Firefox's built-in PDF Viewer and "the interaction of the mechanism that enforces JavaScript context separation." Versions of Firefox that don't use the PDF Viewer, such as FireFox for Android, aren't affected, though it does affect the browser in Windows. Mozilla added that the vulnerability doesn't enable the execution of arbitrary code, however it's able to inject a JavaScript payload into the local file context, which then allows it to search for and upload local files, including sensitive ones. Interestingly enough, the malware looks for files that are typically associated with developers as opposed to bank statements or things of that nature. Mozilla also points out that Mac users are unaffected by this particular exploit, but would not be immune if a new payload was created. Furthermore, the exploit is stealthy, leaving no trace that anything foul took place. The latest version of Firefox (39.0.3) includes security updates that fix the vulnerability. You can force an update by clicking on Settings (those three horizontal lines in the upper-right corner of Firefox), Help Menu icon (question mark at the bottom), and About Firefox. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Build It: Twice as Nice—Quietly Does It Posted: 07 Aug 2015 12:00 AM PDT This article was published in the July 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here. Fitting multiple radiators into a new mid-tower case from Fractal DesignLength of Time: 1–3 Hours | Difficulty: Medium The MissionWhen this editor took over the "Build It" section a couple of years ago, the aims were initially modest: Don't screw it up. The standards were high, and the amount of available time was low—just the way we like it. It turned necessity into the mother of invention, leading to a PC running inside an aquarium fi lled with mineral oil, a mini Dream Machine cramming a 280mm radiator and dual video cards into a microATX case, a tri-SLI 4K test bench, and everything in between. In this final entry before the reins are handed off to another gearhead, we come full circle and do something relatively straightforward: a nice gaming system that doesn't break the bank, built inside a relatively conventional mid-tower case. But there's some new and interesting hardware in the mix, of course—expect nothing less. We have minty-fresh gear from Fractal Design, Corsair, and Asus for your perusal. This build is also oriented toward low noise, so those of you with sensitive ears might want to check it out. Not Loud, Still ProudWhen you're trying to cut down on noise generation, the biggest factor is your case. Fractal Design recently released the Define R5, which is a mid-tower with pre-installed noise absorption panels on the sides and front. The top of it uses the company's "ModuVent" system, which features modular panels with their own sound absorption that you can pop out to mount fans. We've had great success in the noise department with the R4, and this line of cases is quite roomy and sturdily built as well. Perfect for our needs. Ingredients
The funky-looking video card in there is the Radeon R9 295X2. This has two 290X GPUs in it, and an integrated water-cooling system with a 120mm radiator and fan. We moved some things around to make room for its cooling. Since it only costs around $650, despite being the fastest single card available (Nvidia's Titan Z was apparently a limited run), it seemed like a no-brainer. Of course, he needs some hefty power, so we're adding our trusty 800W Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold. This—along with an Intel Core i7-4790K, 2x 4GB of low-profi le Corsair DDR3 RAM, a 480GB SanDisk Extreme II SSD, and a 4TB WD Black Edition—gets plugged into an Asus Z97 Pro Gamer motherboard, which we should be able to overclock respectably. We've also added a 120mm Noctua fan to the front of the case. Otherwise, we'd have just the one 140mm pre-installed fan in that spot. 1. Panel Beating This switch is new to Fractal Design cases. When you press down, it releases two catches that hold the side panel onto the case. That means you have toolless entry with just a flick. You can optionally add two screws if you're worried that the panel will pop out when you're not looking. Under ordinary circumstances, however, it's not possible to get in without pushing down on this widget. Unfortunately, it's a bit tricky to get the side panel back on, so this might not be the best case for first-time gearheads. The sound-absorption layer adds weight, so you need to grip the panel firmly on removal, to avoid gouging your desk. 2. Hard Case This case actually comes with three drive cages with a total of 10 drive trays. All cages are removable, even the 5.25-inch cage at the top. We kept only the smaller 3.5-inch drive cage and lifted it to a higher mounting point to make room for the video card's radiator down below. We could have tossed all the drive cages, because there are two 2.5-inch mounts behind the motherboard, but then there would be nowhere to install the WD drive. The case comes with silicone grommets that you can slide into a drive tray to absorb the vibration of a mechanical drive, and each tray can take a 2.5-inch drive as well. All of the trays are metal (which is rare), so you don't have to worry about snapping bits off through rough handling or dropping on the floor. And because this case is so wide, you don't need right-angle cables in the back. 3. Screaming Fans With the drive cage elevated several inches, we have enough clearance to install the video card's radiator. The rad gets screwed in from below, after sliding out the dust filter underneath the case to make way for installation. We had some concern that the air coming from the case's front intake fan would get sucked into the rad's fan, which would mean less airflow across the motherboard, so we added a 120mm Noctua fan in front to provide more cooling. We also could have removed the ModuVent on the side to install a case fan there, but that would increase the noise level. 4. Access All Areas The larger fan in the top of this image is 140mm and comes pre-installed. You can lift the dust filter away to access the whole front area. There are notches on the right of the fan mounts to feed their cables back into the case. At that point, you can connect them to the case's integrated three-speed fan controller, or plug them into mobo fan headers, if available. We opted for the controller. It gets juice from your power supply via a SATA power connector. You may have noticed there are no grills on the front. Instead, the R5 has vents on the sides to pull in air. This way, it can dedicate the front to a slab of noise-absorbing material. It's pretty slick. If you don't care about that, you can remove the door. It's just attached with a couple of screws. 5. Wide Load From above, you can see just how wide this case is. Those black screws are attached to a standard 240mm radiator (that of the H100i GTX that's cooling our CPU). Why would you want to shift everything to one side? That way, you don't have to worry about large mobo heatsinks or tall RAM sticks blocking the installation of a radiator and its fans. There's plenty of room to now add a second set of fans to the rad, which is pretty rare for a mid-tower. And there's room for a 360mm rad if you remove the 5.25-inch drive cage. We installed the fans below the rad, pushing its heat out of the case. This is much easier than trying to sandwich the fans between the rad and the top of the case in a "pull" formation. Some cases have extra-wide mounting holes designed for case fan screws, but Fractal Design seems to understand that this location is more likely to be used for installing a radiator, so we had no issues there. 6. Nice and Tidy We could take credit for the cleanliness, but it turns out Fractal pre-routed the cables coming in from the front (things like two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, headphones, and mic) and strapped them down with these Velcro straps. We just had to take their lead, loosening the straps to make room for a 24-pin power cable. The mobo tray is sunken compared to the R4, so there's less play behind it. That gives you the radiator clearance we talked about, and also allows taller air coolers. We can still send a rounded 8-pin CPU cable back here without contortions. You'll note a similar-looking cable down below. This is for PCIe power. It's integrated into the power supply, so we can't remove it. We went with two modular cables because they were flat (and so more flexible) plus all-black (making them less noticeable). We hooked up the fan controller and two drives with a single SATA cable.
Rocket RigOverall, this system felt like a solid gaming machine. We got an average of 145 frames per second in Batman: Arkham City, with all settings cranked up at 2560x1600 (other than Nvidia's proprietary PhysX). When running the video card benchmarks, the 295X2's radiator pumped out a lot of heat through the bottom of the case, as expected, but the lower intake fan on the front of the case recirculated a minimal amount of that, thankfully. The best orientation for the rad would probably be on the top of the case or the side, if possible, since heat rises. But the bottom mount seems to do well in a pinch. And our 800-watt power supply had no trouble dealing with the hefty power requirements of this video card. Corsair's H100i GTX performed admirably, its fans hardly spinning up no matter what load we put on the CPU, which was overclocked from 4GHz to 4.4GHz and didn't go past 73 degrees Celsius. We probably could have pushed it to 4.5GHz, but we prefer being confident about the stability of the system versus cranking it up as hard as we can and quickly running a test before the thing locks up. That can be fun, but it's not representative. And with this radiator, the chamber on the side that connects to the tubes was a little wider than we anticipated, and the case's rear exhaust fan obstructed it. That's why the tubes are coming out on the "far" end, with the pump logo upside-down. A fresh system is also super-snappy, allowing a full reboot cycle in less than 20 seconds. So you can get into the BIOS, make a tweak, and be back to Windows in a fl ash. The motherboard initially wouldn't let us boot at all, because we didn't have anything plugged into the CPU fan header (the cooler's fans plug directly into the pump). We had to hunt around before we found the setting to ignore that header altogether, but it's an important safety measure to have. By default, a system will shut down if the CPU gets too hot, but you can override that—at which point you better have everything plugged in correctly. Despite its rocket-fueled performance, this system is a bit slower than our zero point in some tests, even with its higher clock speed. That's because the i7-3930K has two additional cores—and an MSRP of about $580. At about $340, the 4790K is not bad value. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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