General Gaming Article |
- Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Core i7 Gaming Laptop, Corsair 600W PSU, and More!
- Elon Musk Calls Apple's Electric Car Team a 'Tesla Graveyard' of Ex-Employees
- This Is What You'll Need to Run Fallout 4
- Built It: Rocket Science
- Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB
| Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Core i7 Gaming Laptop, Corsair 600W PSU, and More! Posted: 09 Oct 2015 09:48 AM PDT Top Deal: Sometimes the road comes-a-calling. Maybe it's a business trip, a vacation, or you just need to run away for a spell. Whatever the case may be, it's handy to bring a laptop, so why not get one that's capable of playing games? They're often pricey, but if you go for something a bit more modest and not cutting edge, you won't have to murder your wallet or purse. Case in point is today's top deal for an Asus Gaming Laptop w/ an Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU for $680 with free shipping (normally $923). It has 8GB of RAM, 750GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 845M graphics, and Windows 8.1 64-bit, which you can upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost. Other Deals: Samsung 850 Pro 2.5-inch 128GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive for $80 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCKAAX22]) Corsair CX600M 600W SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply for $65 with free shipping (normally $80; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 for $230 with free shipping (normally $240 - use coupon code: [EMCKAAX24]) Asus GTX750TI-OC-2GD5 GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB 128-Bit Video Card for $120 with free shipping (normally $125 - use coupon code: [EMCKAAX32]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Elon Musk Calls Apple's Electric Car Team a 'Tesla Graveyard' of Ex-Employees Posted: 09 Oct 2015 09:06 AM PDT Oh snap! Tesla founder Elon Musk doesn't have the same outspoken reputation as, say, T-Mobile CEO John Legere, the latter of which loves to rile up Sprint through social media. However, Musk isn't afraid to talk some smack, especially when it comes to Apple and its rumored efforts to build an electric car. Apple's electric car initiative is one of the worst kept secrets in Silicon Valley. There's evidence all over the place of Apple's automobile efforts, including the hiring of former Tesla employees. Do you think Musk feels threatened by that? "They have hired people we've fired," Musk told Handelsblatt, a German newspaper, according to Engadget. Musk indicated that he and his auto industry colleagues refer to Apple as the Tesla Graveyard. In a non-joking manner, he said that "if you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple." Shots fired! That wasn't all Musk had to say about Apple and its electric car efforts. He's fine with Apple branching out from devices like the Apple Watch, but noted that "cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can't just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say, 'Build me a car'." Musk also offered up some snarky criticism about Apple's ability (or inability) innovate. "For Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough," Musk said. If it's any consolation to Tim Cook and the gang, Apple wasn't the only one that drew criticism from Musk. He was more than willing to talk about German automakers and what they're doing wrong, along with the industry having reached the end of the limit of what's possible with gasoline. "You see what's happened with the current diesel scandal at Volkswagen. In order to make progress, they apparently had to cheat," Musk said. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This Is What You'll Need to Run Fallout 4 Posted: 09 Oct 2015 08:27 AM PDT Back in June 2015, Bethesda announced the next installment in its popular first-person shooter/RPG Fallout series, Fallout 4, just months before the game would actually hit store shelves. The studio hesitated in announcing the game earlier because, according to Bethesda PR head Pete Hines, game director Todd Howard is a perfectionist and doesn't like to reveal his works of art before they're complete. Now there's just over a month until the game lands in our hands, and Fallout fans who want to play it on their PCs can use this short window of time to upgrade their rigs, if necessary. On Thursday, Bethesda revealed the system requirements, providing both minimum and recommended hardware. The studio also revealed in a short FAQ that Fallout 4 will support Xbox One and Xbox 360 controllers, pleasing those who detest the old-school mouse and keyboard setup (for shame!). Fallout 4 will also support Steam achievements, the FAQ says, and there will be a Pip-Boy app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices. "Digitally the game will become available on November 10, 2015, at 12:01 am (local time) in all territories (In North America, the unlock time will be 12:01 am EST), except Asia (available at 12 am on Wednesday, November 11th) and Japan (available at 12 am on Thursday, December 17th)," Bethesda states in its latest blog. So, what are the system specs for PC gamers? Here are the minimum requirements:
And here are the recommended requirements:
Those who insist on playing Fallout 4 on a console will need 28GB to 35GB of drive space to store the game files. The size depends on the supported language and territory. For a list of supported languages, head here. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 09 Oct 2015 12:00 AM PDT This article was published in the October 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here. Dream Machine 2015 was pitched at the Moon; this rig aims for low-Earth orbitLength of Time: 1-3 Hours | Level of Difficulty: Medium to Challenging The Flight PlanWhen we build the Dream Machine every year, we don't hold back. We get the best parts, regardless of the price. If a part is a tier higher in price, but only renders a performance increase of 5 percent, we go for it. And this year, we really, really went for a Moonshot. But not everyone can afford a $22,000 Dream Machine for their home. So, in the spirit of our NASA-inspired theme, we decided to go a little smaller. It's pretty much a miniature Dream Machine, with a price point that's a little more down to earth. We gathered up parts that didn't make it into the Dream Machine for some reason, or that would be a little more sensible in terms of price. Make no mistake: This machine still soars and climbs for excellence. An out-of-this-world PC is still within reach for many enthusiasts who save up their credits. It's not cheap, but no respectable space program is. Since this is the Dream Machine's little brother, we felt the need to do a little overclocking as well. We weren't able to be as aggressive with our overclocks as the EK custom loop allowed us to be in its big brother, but we still got respectable and stable overclocks. Giving this PC enough extra thrust to leave the atmosphere. Vehicle AssemblyWe based this on a case that was meant for the Dream Machine, but ended up being too small for the custom water loops we used. The case was a prototype of Antec's S10 that we had custom painted by Smooth Creations to replicate a Titan II Gemini Launch Vehicle on a launchpad. We went with a Core i75930X CPU. It's two cores lighter than the Dream Machine's 5960X, but friendlier to overclocks and your wallet. The 5960X is nearly $500 more, meaning you're paying $250 per extra core. We got a nice stable overclock with our 5930K, bumping it to 4.5GHz from the stock 3.5GHz with the help of 1.31 volts. We kept the main engine cool with an NZXT Kraken X61. The GPUs are a pair of EVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked ACXs in SLI. We overclocked these already factory-overclocked rockets further, adding 150MHz to the core clocks and 300MHz to the memory clocks using EVGA's PrecisionX software. We powered the overclock with an overvolt of 31mV. We used 16GB of 2,800MHz DDR4 memory in a kit of four 4GB modules. We ran into problems at 2,800MHz, so underclocked to 2,666MHz for stability. For storage, we halved what we had in the Dream Machine. We put the 1TB SSDs in RAID 0 for the OS, and kept the 6TB spinning drives in reserve. We mounted all of these goodies onto Gigabyte's X99 SOC Champion mobo, which has more overclocking options than we knew what to do with. We powered our ship with an 80 Plus Gold certified Enermax 1,350W Maxrevo modular PSU.
1. Booster IgnitionThe pair of 980 Ti'S that we used really push this machine into the ionosphere. The main thing to keep in mind is that they're air cooled. Maintaining good airflow was a top priority when we went into the realms of overclocking. Luckily, the SOC Champion's PCIe x16 slots are numbered (from top to bottom) 1, 4, 2, 3. That means that for the best performance, we had to put the second GPU in the third slot from the top. This gave us a nice gap where air could flow freely, in comparison to the 2–5mm it would have if the cards were in adjacent slots. We also upped the fan speeds in PrecisionX to 90–100 percent when we were searching for a stable overclock. To be sure, there was a lot of air flowing around these two cards. If you look closely, you'll see that spacing these cards farther apart means that you can add an M.2 SSD if you prefer storage speed over a potential third GPU. 2. Cramped QuartersSpaceships aren't exactly roomy. Engineers cram the most equipment into the tiniest space available to save on weight and profile. This machine was no different. When we attached the Kraken to the top mounting bracket, we had to really push the bracket into place, smashing the CPU power cables a bit. It's secured by two thumbscrews, and lining up those screw holes was a test of mettle and patience. We could then place intake fans to the front of the case's main compartment to pull in lots of air for our GPUs. The X61 kept our CPU at a cool 25 degrees Celsius at idle, and at 57 degrees while under a 90 percent load, running our Premiere Pro CS6 benchmark. 3. Auxiliary ThrustersAttaching our X61 allowed us to mount three fans up front to draw in air. We chose a trio of EK's Vardar static pressure fans, 120mm versions of what's in the Dream Machine. These babies spin at 2,200rpm and push 77 cubic feet per minute (131 cubic meters per hour). We hooked up the top fan to the CPU PWM fan connector (our X61 is hooked into CPU_OPT), and the bottom two to the two spare connectors on the X61. It's worth noting that the retail S10 has a PWM fan hub on the back of the motherboard tray, so doing things this way wouldn't be required. For benchmarking, we cranked up the power to get air flowing over the 980 Ti's. Boy, did that air flow. The S10 also features a removable filter on the outside of the main compartments in front of the fans. A tab near the base of the S10 releases the filter for removal. 4. Manual IgnitionWhen we were first trying to get Dream Machine parts to fit into this case, we accidentally pulled the frontpanel wires loose of the panel buttons and LEDs. Whoops. Luckily, this mobo came with a power button on the board itself. Many modern mobos feature a power button, and they come in handy for things beside compensating for screwups, for example, if you're building on a test bed or want to test a particular feature without connecting the frontpanel buttons. There are also buttons to reset the BIOS to defaults, and a toggle that switches to the backup BIOS as well. That sounds trivial, but when you're using all the overclocking features this mobo has to offer, messing up is very possible. Having an easy way to switch to an alternate BIOS or reset to defaults is a good move for tinkerers and overclockers who want to push limits. 5. Open the Pod Bay Doors HALOne of the things that will first catch your eye is the S10's separate tower for hard drives. It seems excessive, but it has a realworld purpose: keeping the ambient temperature of the main compartment low. The tower's doors swing open in the front and rear of the case, making installation easy. The slots for the toolless brackets are rubberized, so drive vibration is absorbed, resulting in longer drive life and less sound from platters spinning at 7,200 RPM. Our pair of 6TB drives were happy, kept plenty cool by a dedicated fan. The fan draws air from under the tower and pushes it up, across the surfaces of the vertically mounted drives. We hooked this fan to the SYS_FAN3 PWM fan header on our mobo, and set the speed to maximum. It stayed quiet at that speed. 6. Control ConduitsWe don't often show cable management in our builds. It's not always pretty. But there's good reason to this time. The first thing to notice is how SATA power and data cables get into the hard drive tower. A tab at the bottom of the case can be released. But this tab covers the cable passthrough, where all your SATA cables must go. We positioned the WD drives on the bottom row to stay within our cables' reach. Also note that if you want a clean case, the rest of the system's power must snake through a fairly small cutout, requiring long PSU cables. In our build, only the ATX cable was long enough to get where it needed to go. For the CPU power, we had to route through the fl oor grommet into the main compartment, back out the grommet under the mobo, and then back in through the grommet above the mobo.
Reentry and splashdownAt $5,044, this lower-orbit version of the Dream Machine is still plenty pricey, but delivers dreamy performance at less than 25 percent of the cost of our DM's internal parts. This ship is essentially a tier above what we're able to achieve in our Turbo builds. We had a lot of fun building into this case, which was a prototype that needed a refinement here or there. Even with minor shortcomings, the case presents well, has good airflow in all of the parts that matter, and even had room for our beefy Kraken X61, though it meant a little pushing and shoving to get everything to align. Many of the issues we had have been addressed and fixed in the production case. When we ran our benchmarks, we really saw the kind of performance the GTX 980 Ti offers with its 6GB of VRAM. The fact that we used factory-overclocked models that we then overclocked some more paid dividends in the frame rate department. The triple GTX 980 SLI setup in our zero point was outgunned by the higher VRAM the GTX 980 Ti's were packing. Given that a trio of reference GTX 980s cost $1,620 (at $540 each), the pair of GTX 980 Ti's, at $1,340 ($670 each), provides the greater value. Sometimes two really is greater than three. That performance comes at the cost of power though: Reference GTX 980 Ti's draw 100 watts more than the plain old 980 reference cards do. That's still less power than the 375 watts the Radeon Fury X draws, and two 980 Ti's will put you just 125 watts over the Fury X's power demand. The i75930K served us well. A hearty overclocker, it got us to the same clock speed we had in the Dream Machine, but was just short two cores. Two cores are a big deal, but with such a huge price difference, the 5930K really delivers bang for your buck. We could have saved a lot of coin on the hard drives, if that was a motivation, since the lower-capacity WD Black drives are far more affordable than their 6TB brethren. Likewise, builders pay a premium for a 1TB SSD. Opting for 250GB or 500GB models could save hundreds, which could go toward a third 980 Ti, a third SSD for a three-drive RAID array, or a bunch of games on Steam. All in all, we're very happy with this build, and had a great time assembling this rocket. While still priced at a premium, we feel this mini–Dream Machine reaches for the stars, while remaining a little more attainable.
Our desktop zero-point PC uses a 5960X CPU, three GTX 980s, and 16GB of RAM. Arkham City tested at 2560x1440 Max settings with PhysX off. Tomb Raider at Ultimate settings. Shadow of Mordor at Max settings. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB Posted: 08 Oct 2015 02:38 PM PDT At a Glance(+) Great Find: Faster than SATA; high endurance; HHHL adapter for older systems. (-) NeVer Mind-e: Not as fast as other PCIe offerings; expensive; short warranty; no NVMe support. Fly Like an EagleWith all the hullabaloo about M.2 PCIe SSDs and NVMe, users of older systems might feel left out. Enter the Kingston HyperX Predator, with an optional half-height, half-length (HHHL) adapter card that allows anyone with a spare PCI Express slot to use an M.2 drive. There's nothing revolutionary about the adapter card, as it just converts up to four Gen3 PCIe lanes into an M.2 connector, but it opens the M.2 doors to virtually any recent desktop. The question of course is whether or not you'd actually want to use an M.2 drive via an adapter instead of just grabbing a native PCIe SSD like the Intel SSD 750, but whether or not you have a motherboard with an M.2 slot, it's a viable option. Unlike the Intel SSD 750 and the Samsung NVMe drives, the current Predator uses the established AHCI protocol. That means you can use it as a boot device, where using an NVMe SSD as your OS/boot drive requires that your motherboard BIOS supports NVMe. This makes the Predator more compatible with a variety of systems, but it also makes it potentially slower. Kingston is working on an NVMe version of the drive as well, though it's not ready for release yet.
Checking out the specifications, one impressive statistic on the Predator is the endurance rating. Kingston specs the 480GB model we're testing at a whopping 882TB total bytes written, which equates to 1.7 drive writes per day (DWPD). Even the heaviest of home users is unlikely to be writing 800GB of data on a daily basis, so it's highly unlikely anyone will be burning through all the NAND cycles. We have to temper the high endurance rating with a less impressive three year warranty, however; many other SSDs carry a five year warranty—not that the warranty will do you any good if your drive fails and you lose data, so make sure you keep a good backup strategy in place! The remaining specifications are decent but nowhere near class leading. Of note is the high power use, which may make the Predator less than ideal for notebooks even if they have the requisite M.2 PCIe slot. The IOPS ratings look promising, though it's interesting that the smaller 240GB drive sports higher values, indicating perhaps that the Marvell controller isn't tuned for larger drive sizes. Finally, the maximum throughput is only about twice that of a good SATA drive, and clearly behind the current market leaders (Intel SSD 750 and Samsung SM951 NVMe). Where things really get dicey is the pricing. The Predator initially launched with MSRP well above $1 per GB ($746/$364 for the 480GB/240GB drives, not including the adapter card), but that was thanks in part to its early-adopter M.2 PCIe status. With more competition available, prices have dropped to under $1 per GB now, and interestingly you can actually get the 240GB drive with the adapter for less than the price of the 240GB M.2 card alone. The problem is that Samsung's SM951 (NVMe or AHCI) sports much faster specs, and while the 256GB model is more expensive than the 240GB Predator, the 512GB model costs substantially less than the 480GB Kingston drive—and you get 32GB of additional storage capacity as an added bonus. Take this Broken WingAs noted in our revamped SSD test suite article, we've updated to a new test bed for storage, running a Skylake processor in a Z170 motherboard. Here are the details of our test system, followed by the benchmarks. Details on how we test SSDs are available here.
With the SATA bottleneck out of the picture, M.2 SSDs can stretch their wings and fly… at least to the limit of their abilities. This is where the Predator runs into problems, ultimately falling prey to the substantially faster NVMe drives. While the Predator numbers look good compared to any SATA drive, it falls far short of the Intel SSD 750 and the Samsung SM951 NVMe. We measured 109K 4K read IOPS, which is close to Kingston's rated throughput, but only 60K write IOPS—well off the 118K rated value. In general, the Predator ends up delivering roughly half the maximum performance of the SM951 and SSD 750, which really hurts when coupled with the lower price point of the 512GB SM951. Another comparison point is the two Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SATA SSDs in RAID 0. These run neck and neck with the single Predator, often beating it in random IO workloads. The mixed random IOmeter results are particularly bad, with the Predator falling well behind even single SATA SSDs. In our real-world file copy test, it still manages to claim a third place finish, and PCMark 8 illustrates yet again that for everyday tasks there's only so far a fast SSD can take you. But if you're paying top dollar for an SSD, chances are you'd also want a top performing SSD. Learn to Fly AgainThis just goes to show that using the latest technology as a basis for your next buying decision can often lead to disappointment. The Predator has actually been out for a while now, and it was one of the first M.2 PCIe SSDs to hit the market. Unfortunately, while it's generally faster than any individual SATA drive, the Predator falls well short of the potential that M.2 PCIe offers. The Intel SSD 750 and Samsung SM951 NVMe easily surpass the performance of the Predator, and they do so without carrying a substantial price premium. Or if you don't need or want NVMe, the existing Samsung SM951 also delivers better performance. With the Samsung 950 Pro set to launch next week at even lower prices than the SM951, the writing is on the wall: Kingston needs to cut prices on this drive to keep it relevant. That's the good news, though: With the only real difference between the Predator and other SSDs coming in the form of the controller and interface—items which shouldn't dramatically affect the cost of producing the drive—there should be plenty of room to lower the price. We're giving the Predator a 65 based on the performance and current pricing, but if it should drop to just above SATA price levels—say, $0.50 per GB—we would be less critical. Follow Jarred on Twitter. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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