General Gaming Article |
- AVADirect Mini Cube Gaming PC Review
- Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 290X Review
- Toshiba Qosmio X75 Review
- Dream Machine Case Redux
- WD Black2 SSD+HDD Review
- Ask the Doctor
- Antec Kuhler H20 950 Review
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition Review
- Neat Company NeatConnect Review
- NZXT Source 530 Review
| AVADirect Mini Cube Gaming PC Review Posted: 24 Jul 2014 03:11 PM PDT Just call it 'The Fridge'Naming a PC isn't an easy task. It's hard enough when you're talking about your personal PC (Betsy, Svetlana, or Jabba work well), but when you're a company selling a new model, Marketing 101 says the name should imbue magic and convince consumers to pony up.
Though capable and reasonably priced, this medium form factor is eclipsed by smaller, faster, and cheaper machines. We're guessing AVADirect didn't take that class, as its new custom mini-cube gaming PC is apparently named Mini Cube Gaming PC. The truth is, AVADirect probably doesn't give a damn about the name because frankly, who cares? Maybe "5S" or "S IV" works on some people, but on a custom PC where you pick out the parts yourself, it's probably far less pressing. Around the office, we've taken to calling this handsome SFF machine "The Fridge," not necessarily because of its size, but because of its Frigidaire-like aesthetic. Sure, it would have been cool if the optical drive shared the same brushed-aluminum surface, but it still matches the black accents elsewhere on the case. While there's no question that this is a small form factor rig, compared to the micro-towers we've seen lately, it's pretty big. It's more than double the width of the Falcon Northwest Tiki, and while slightly shorter than the CyberPower Hadron we reviewed in February, it's about three inches wider than that machine. That size increase gives it more capability. While most micro-towers use SFX or 1U PSUs, The Fridge uses a standard 760W Seasonic ATX PSU. Inside, you'll also find a liquid-cooled Core i7-4770K overclocked to 4.2GHz, 16GB of Kingston DDR3/1600, two Kingston 120GB HyperX SSDs in RAID 0, a 2TB WD HDD, an MSI Z87 Mini-ITX board, and an Asus GeForce GTX 780 card. Against our zero-point system, the AVADirect represents well in the non-heavily multithreaded tasks but, not surprisingly, it gets left behind in all other tests by the ZP's six-core Core i7-3930K part clicking along at 3.8GHz. That includes gaming tests, but not by the margin you would expect from the zero-point's GeForce GTX 690. The more important question is how The Fridge compares with the SFF/micro-tower crowd. Not too shabby. The bad mutha of the group continues to be Falcon Northwest's Tiki, with its Haswell part overclocked to 4.7GHz and a GeForce Titan. Indeed, the Tiki still stands as the fastest micro-tower we've ever tested, and the fact that it's held onto that title well into the new year demonstrates how aggressively Falcon went for broke with this model. Of course, that aggression comes at a price, with the Tiki hitting the $4,400 mark. At $2,583, AVADirect can pull the old, "You can buy our system, play all of your games, and still have enough money to buy two of the upcoming cheap 4K panels" routine. Normally, that routine would sway us, because like most folks, we can see sacrificing a little performance for a new monitor, keyboard, mouse, and new suit and shoes, too. But then there's CyberPower PC's Hadron Hydro 300, which costs $300 less than the AVADirect. It almost mirrors the parts in the AVADirect except for the HDD. The Hadron also packs custom liquid-cooling for its CPU and GPU, which, while the chassis gets a tad warm, helps the rig run extremely quietly and gives it a slight performance edge. The AVADirect box is louder and under heavy loads emits a low-frequency large-fan buzz. That leaves the AVADirect in a tough spot. It's slower than the Tiki and more expensive than the Hadron. Yes, it's got an off-the-shelf PSU, but we're not sure that's worth the sacrifice in size. Yes, it's a striking-looking case with its brushed-steel/aluminum finish, but maybe the sun is just finally starting to set on the medium form factor. $2,584, www.avadirect.com Note: This article was originally featured in our March issue of the magazine. |
| Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 290X Review Posted: 24 Jul 2014 03:09 PM PDT A real gem of a GPUFor those who haven't kept up with current events: Late last year AMD launched its all-new Hawaii GPUs, starting with its flagship Radeon R9 290X that featured a blower-type cooler designed by AMD. In testing, it ran hotter than any GPU we've ever tested, hitting 94 C at full load, which is about 20 C higher than normal. AMD assured everyone this was no problemo, and that the board was designed to run those temps until the meerkats came home. It was stable at 94 C, but the GPU throttled performance at those temps. The stock fan was also a bit loud at max revs, so though the card offered kick-ass performance, it was clearly being held back by the reference cooler.
The Tri-X throws off AMD's meh cooler. Therefore, we all eagerly awaited the arrival of cards with aftermarket coolers, and this month we received the first aftermarket Radeon R9 290X—the massive triple-fan Tri-X model from Sapphire; and we must say, all of our Radeon prayers have been answered by this card. Not only does it run totally cool and quiet at all times, but because it runs so chilly it has plenty of room to overclock, making it a card that addresses every single one of our complaints about the reference design from AMD. There is one caveat: price. The Sapphire card is $50 more expensive than the reference card at $600, but you are obviously getting quite a bit of additional horsepower for your ducats. Not only does it run totally cool and quiet at all times, but because it runs so chilly it has plenty of room to overclock, making it a card that addresses every single one of our complaints about the reference design from AMD. There is one caveat: price. The Sapphire card is $50 more expensive than the reference card at $600, but you are obviously getting quite a bit of additional horsepower for your ducats. When we first fired it up, we were amazed to see it hit 1,040MHz under load, and stay there throughout testing. Even more surprising were the temps we were seeing. Since the reference card hits 94 C all day long, this is obviously a really hot GPU, but the Sapphire Tri-X cooler was holding it down at a chilly 75 C. The card was whisper-quiet too, which was also a pleasant surprise given the noise level of the reference cooler. We were also able to overclock it to 1,113MHz, which is a turnaround in that we could not overclock the reference board at all since it throttles at stock settings. When we first fired it up, we were amazed to see it hit 1,040MHz under load, and stay there throughout testing. Even more surprising were the temps we were seeing. Since the reference card hits 94 C all day long, this is obviously a really hot GPU, but the Sapphire Tri-X cooler was holding it down at a chilly 75 C. The card was whisper-quiet too, which was also a pleasant surprise given the noise level of the reference cooler. We were also able to overclock it to 1,113MHz, which is a turnaround in that we could not overclock the reference board at all since it throttles at stock settings. $600, www.sapphiretech.com Note: This review was originally featured in the March 2014 issue of the magazine. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2014 03:04 PM PDT Lots of graphical horsepower at a reasonable priceIt's been a while since we reviewed a Toshiba gaming notebook, so we couldn't wait to get our hands on the company's new Qosmio X75. Unlike iBuypower's super-slim and portable 17-inch Battalion M1771 gaming notebook we reviewed last issue, the Qosmio X75 puts power ahead of portability. With a body measuring 16.5x10.7x1.7 inches and weighing more than seven pounds, the X75 is definitely in desktop-replacement territory. The chassis is clad in black textured aluminum, with lots of red accenting, such as the shiny red trim around the body and the trackpad, the red LED keyboard backlighting, and the glowing red Qosmio logo on the lid. It all serves to add a bit of flash to an otherwise subtle aesthetic.
Go with 8GB of RAM and forego the Blu-ray drive to save $300. A couple aspects we don't like are the 4-pin power connector, which necessitates precise orientation of the plug. We're also not crazy about the exhaust fan's location on the right edge, which could mean warm wrists for right-handers during heavy play sessions. While it never got uncomfortably hot, we would have preferred a rear exhaust. On the bright side, the Qosmio's display is one of the best TN panels we've seen, with fantastic viewing angles and a vibrant 1080p glossy display, which didn't suffer from the usual glare problem. We also had no qualms with the laptop's quad Harman/Kardon speakers, which sounded clear and powerful. As a matter of fact, we can confidently say that these are some of the best laptop speakers we've heard. The trackpad is similarly praise-worthy. While we normally harp on trackpads that don't feature two dedicated buttons, the Qosmio's uniform expanse is easy to use, with horizontal grooves above the left and right mouse clickers providing a suitable substitute for separate buttons. In addition, the trackpad is ample at 4.5x3.2 inches, highly responsive, and supports multitouch gestures. The keyboard is also equally competent, although we do wish the arrow keys were full-size as opposed to half-size. Inside the chassis, the Qosmio sports a quad-core 2.4GHz 4700MQ CPU, a GeForce GTX 770M, and 16GB of memory. For storage, it has a 256GB mSATA SSD coupled with a 1TB hard drive. The laptop has a 47Wh 8-cell battery. When it was time to perform, Toshiba's laptop killed it in the gaming department, but was average everywhere else. We had never reviewed a gaming laptop with a 770M before, and found that it had no issues kicking the crap out of the more mobile-oriented 765M GPU in our Alienware 14 zero-point rig, thanks in no small part to its 3GB of GDDR5 memory. We're talking performance advantages of 17–66 percent in the gaming tests. The Qosmio couldn't quite keep up with our zero-point in our CPU-intensive benchmarks, however, losing by roughly 3–8 percent. While those aren't huge losses, it's still a little disappointing given that both laptops use the same Intel processor. We suspect that Toshiba is throttling the CPU to avoid thermal issues. Thankfully, the laptop never got hot, so we didn't hear much fan noise. The laptop's biggest failing actually came by way of battery life, which isn't a big surprise from a machine of this size. In our video rundown test, the Qosmio lasted two hours and 20 minutes. If you're interested in getting a laptop this large, you're most likely going to use it as a desktop replacement, thus battery life isn't really an issue. And while its CPU performance is a little disappointing, the Qosmio X75 offers a lot of performance as a gaming laptop for a very fair price. While our build cost $1,800, foregoing a Blu-ray drive and reducing the memory to 8GB of RAM (which is more than enough for gaming) could save $275, bringing the total to a little over $1,500. When you also consider the fact that you can easily pop open the bottom of the laptop for swapping out RAM and storage (without voiding the warranty), the Qosmio X75 turns out to be a great deal for enthusiasts, particularly gamers. $1,800, www.toshiba.com Note: This review was originally featured in the March 2014 issue of the magazine. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2014 02:59 PM PDT Spin-offs of old case favorites square offAh, Cooler Master and Corsair. We know you well, especially since the cases we're checking out here are derivatives of cases that have previously been featured in Maximum PC's annual opus, the fabled Dream Machine. Here's a spoiler, though: We're not likely to pick either one for next year's big build. We're pretty impressed with Corsair's offering, but a few quirks in design keep this strong case from achieving a better score. As for Cooler Master, it's time to take the Cosmos SE back to the drawing board, unless you fancy a game of "Honey, I Shrunk My Components." Cooler Master Cosmos SEMaybe we're spoiled, but the phrase "full-tower chassis" tends to evoke a certain image in our minds—a sense of space, in particular. We hear "full-tower" and we think beaucoup room: tons of empty mounts for hard drives and 5.25-inch devices, lots of room in which to work and move around (and string cables throughout), as well as a super-easy installation for parts and pieces—one that doesn't feel like you're trying to wedge a very expensive square into a round hole.
Get out the grease; you might have a bit of work ahead of you if you're trying to stuff big parts inside Cooler Master's cramped chassis. Perhaps Cooler Master should have reconsidered calling its Cosmos SE chassis a full-tower, because to us, the description seems a bit stretched. Sure, there's plenty of room for storage. The case supports no fewer than eight 3.5-inch hard drives or a whopping 18 2.5-inch drives (assuming you're slapping two SSDs into each of the case's eight total drive bays). Six of these drive bays can be removed en masse if you want to stash a radiator in place or, annoyingly, if you need a bit more room for your graphics card. That allows us to segue into our primary criticism of the chassis: It's cramped. To the company's credit, Cooler Master does specifically call out the exact measurement of graphics cards that the case supports on its website. However, it does so using the measurement taken if the aforementioned drive bays are removed (15.5 inches in length, if you're curious). When the bays aren't removed—and frankly, we wish we didn't have to remove them, as they're both more useful and aesthetically pleasing than a large, gaping hole—you only get 10.9 inches of clearance for GPUs. To put that in real-world terms, it felt as if we were on the verge of damaging our 10.5-inch Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 video card when wedging it—literally—into the case. We eventually got it in, but it left absolutely no room between the edge of the card and the hard drive bays. You're then totally reliant on the cable-routing holes cut into the tray itself to power up your card, which isn't saying much. Adding to the space concerns of this already-tight chassis is the fact that installing a common ATX motherboard (using provided standoffs; they aren't preinstalled) blocks a portion of two of the case's primary, rubberized cable-routing holes—and, of course, they're the ones closest to the video card you've just hammered into the case. The case's top-mounted 14cm fan covers half of a routing hole on the top of the motherboard tray, as well. If you have anything beyond a standard PC setup, you're going to have quite a bit of hassle getting your cable management to work correctly in this case; we sure did. The case does come with two large holes near the power supply, but you sacrifice case aesthetics when you have to route cables right overtop your parts—at least, we didn't like the picture we were seeing through the case's large side-panel window when doing this workaround. Cooler Master packs plenty of preinstalled cooling into the Cosmos SE. We wish we had a built-in fan controller to reduce the din (and keep us from having to string a ton of Molex connectors together). It doesn't, however, pack in locking mechanisms for your 5.25-inch devices; you have to screw those in manually (hello, five years ago). Two USB 3.0 connections join two USB 2.0 connections on the front, in addition to a button that manually controls the case's blue LED lighting (from the fans). But really, that's just dressing up a pig at this point. We'd recommend the Cosmos SE only to those who like meticulously measuring out all their parts and pieces before doing a build. The other 99 percent of you would do well with a chassis that works for you, not against you. Cooler Master Cosmos SE  $170 (street), www.coolermaster-usa.com Corsair 750DMilitaristic in its precision, Corsair's 750D chassis is all about business, not adornments. You won't find any fancy lighting on this case, nor an inordinate array of preinstalled, pretty cooling for a case of this size. What you do get is a ton of space to work with: plenty of room for cable management, video cards of all sizes, liquid-cooling support for a triple-fan radiator (3x 12cm), and then some. While the case offers plenty to begin with, you could theoretically add even three more drive bays to the interior without it feeling cramped in the slightest.
We almost wish Corsair's case came with an additional drive bay for SSDs; the trays on the case's rear don't quite fit. As you might expect, the 750D fits just about any motherboard you throw its way. The simple ATX mobo we use for our testing felt a bit like Jack in the land of the giants; screwing it into the preinstalled standoffs was easy, and we loved that it was surrounded by a total of eight holes for cable routing (five rubberized, three cut into the top-side of the elevated motherboard tray). While you might lose one or two of these holes if your power supply is larger than five inches long, that still leaves a considerable amount of room to play with. If you're rocking an extended power supply, Corsair makes it fairly easy to remove the three-bay drive cage that stands in your path and relocate it above the similarly sized drive cage on the case's bottom-right. We were a little surprised that this wasn't the 750D's default configuration, as it feels like one has an unnecessary surfeit of room around the graphics card area on the motherboard when both drive cages adorn the case's bottom. That said, the default arrangement does allow for a good amount of uninhibited cooling to churn from the case's two front 14cm fans. A single 14cm fan gives a bit of exhaust on the case's rear; given the 750D's size, however, we'd prefer a larger 20cm variant on the case's top, which could help boost cooling while simultaneously cutting out a bit of noise in the process. While it might sound like we're gushing over the 750D's design, there are still a few quirks that keep this case from "killer" status. For starters, Corsair slaps four drive trays for SSDs on the right side of the chassis, directly blocking the rear of the 3.5-inch drive cage (or cages, depending on your configuration). It's a pain in the butt to route cables and manage storage on the drive cages if you have all four 2.5-inch trays filled with SSDs. While installing an optical drive into one of the three free 5.25-inch bays isn't that bad (you have to pop off a front panel from behind and slide the drive in) the optical drive doesn't actually sit flush against the covers. It ends up being recessed just a bit, which makes for a not-so-impressive aesthetic on the case's front. These misgivings are still minor detractions from an otherwise excellent chassis. The 750D is big, fairly easy to work with, and offers a great arrangement for all but the most tricked-out systems, storage-wise. Corsair 750D  $160 (street), www.corsair.com Note: This article was taken from the March 2014 issue of the magazine. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2014 02:56 PM PDT One drive to rule them allThe WD Black2 is an answer to the prayers of mobile users who have just one drive bay but want the speed of an SSD with the capacity of a hard drive. Unlike a hybrid drive, which stores all data on a hard drive but uses a limited amount of flash storage for caching, the WD Black2 features an all-new design whereby a single 2.5-inch enclosure houses both a hard drive and an SSD—two distinct drives that appear to the OS as such, so you can put your OS on the SSD and your data on the hard drive. It's a brilliant solution that unfortunately gives up a bit of performance in order to conform to the small form factor, but if we had just one storage bay in our notebooks, we'd upgrade to this bad mutha immediately.
The Black2 delivers a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD in a slim 2.5-inch package. The drive is a 9.5mm unit, so it won't be sliding into any ultraportables—those require a 7mm drive—but it will fit just fine in a larger notebook. The SSD portion of the drive is a 120GB unit that uses 20nm MLC NAND flash, though the NAND manufacturer is unknown. It utilizes a JMicron controller as well as DRAM onboard cache. There is also a Marvell SATA bridge chip that allows both drives to share the lone SATA 6Gb/s interface. The hard drive portion is a two-platter, 5,400rpm model with 1TB of capacity, and its "Black" designation indicates that it's one of Seagate's "high-performance" drives, but with hard drives we don't expect blistering performance anymore. We'd just like them to not suck too hard, and for mobile duties they need to conserve power, so they don't have very big shoes to fill. The drive includes an outstanding five-year warranty, and is Windows-only at this time, as it requires software to "unlock" the 1TB partition. Once unlocked though, the partition is visible on any system, or at least it appeared on all the Windows machines we connected it to; we did not verify this with a Mac or Linux machine. You can't use two of these drives in RAID, nor can you span data across both partitions. WD lists the drive's performance specs for the SSD as offering 350MB/s read speeds and 140MB/s write speeds, but it doesn't list any numbers for the hard drive. In our testing we found the SSD to offer slightly faster read speeds, hitting 429MB/s in ATTO, and its write speed of 129MB was very close to spec. That's not as fast as even a midrange SSD, however, so we would not enlist it for heavy usage or any video work. The hard drive portion averaged 114MB/s read and write speeds in testing, which is good enough for data storage but not super impressive. Also, since both drives share a SATA interface, transferring data to both drives simultaneously can cause a traffic jam—we saw read speeds on the SSD drop about 100MB/s when copying data to the hard drive at the same time. All in all, this drive is clearly a compromise, but one we'd be willing to live with if we were constrained by a single storage bay. The SSD is fast enough, and 1TB of storage is bodacious, as well. If it were faster it would earn a Kick Ass award, but for now we'll probably have to wait until Gen 2 to satisfy all of our desires. $300, www.wd.com Note: This review was originally featured in our March 2014 issue of the magazine. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2014 02:52 PM PDT The doctor tackles Too Much GPU, Wi-Fi Upgrades, Disabling SkyDrive, and moreFrom Integrated to Top-ShelfAfter almost 30 years developing software on stock PCs, I finally performed my first build from the pages of Maximum PC. I scoured your pages from many issues and planned a build during a long weekend and it's been purring along for 18 months. I have a Core i5-3570K on an Asus P8Z77.V board, with 16GB RAM, two 128GB SSDs, a 3TB backup drive, and 850W PSU in an NZXT Phantom 410 chassis. Now I'm thinking of adding a graphics card. I don't do a lot with graphics, so I've managed with onboard but I might do more. The GeForce 780 Ti sounds very cool. Will it work well in this system? Will overall performance improve? Apart from a Hyper 212 CPU cooler, I'm only using the Phantom's stock fans. Will I need more cooling? — David Kates The Doctor Responds: Yes, performance will certainly improve—that's one of the best graphics cards on the market, period, and it's going to be faster than your integrated graphics by a factor of four or more. But if you're not gaming or doing much graphically intensive work—and that seems to be the case—the Doc thinks the GeForce 780 Ti might be a little overkill. There's nothing wrong with overkill, and your rig can certainly handle the 780 Ti, but if you're just getting into applications that need more graphical oomph, the Doc suggests starting with something cheaper, like the GTX 760. It's roughly a third the price of the 780 Ti but has the oomph for gaming on high settings on a 1080p panel. If you won't be gaming and just want a little more graphical muscle for everyday tasks, you'll be fine with something even less expensive. HD Storage MIAI recently bought a WD Green 3TB hard drive for backup purposes. I have it in a Thermaltake BlacX USB 3.0 cradle outside of the PC. I have tried a hundred different things I found online, from different partitioning hardware to updating drivers and BIOS, but I can't get the PC to recognize any more than 746GB. From what I saw online, lots of others are having the same problem. I run a Phenom II X6 1090T in an MSI 890FXA-GD65 motherboard with BIOS version 18.9, an AMD 7970, and 16GB of RAM. Any ideas would be appreciated. — Gayle Curry The Doctor Responds: It looks like the problem is with that Thermaltake BlacX cradle not correctly supporting Advanced Format drives like the WD Green series with 4KB sectors instead of 512B sectors. Depending on the model, Thermaltake lists its BlacX docks as supporting "up to 2TB" or "up to 4TB" drives, but it depends on the USB controller inside the cradle, and its firmware. It's also possible that you can update the firmware for the USB controller on your cradle, but Thermaltake's website is a little wonky—we couldn't find firmware update tools for the BlacX 5G, for example. WD's support page indicates that you may be able to get it to work if you attach the drive directly to your motherboard's SATA ports and format it as a GPT partition in Windows Disk Management, then remove it and put it in the USB dock. Wireless-AC UpgradeI have a Dell Inspiron 15R-5520 with an Intel Centrino Wireless N-2230. I just purchased the Nighthawk Netgear router R7000. I would like to upgrade the wireless adapter. I contacted Dell to no avail, and can't even find an email address for Intel. Do you think that the Intel Network 7260 HMWG Wi-Fi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC + Bluetooth HMC is compatible with the Inspiron 15R? At present I can't use the 5GHz band. — Carlos H Castillo The Doctor Responds: It looks like you ought to be able to put that Intel Wireless-AC card into your Inspiron 15R. The Inspiron takes a half-height mini-PCIe wireless card, like the 7260, and the slot is user-accessible—given a generous interpretation of "user-accessible." You do have to take apart most of the laptop to get to it. Dell's service manual for your model is at http://bit.ly/1crLreZ, and we found a YouTube tutorial for your model at http://bit.ly/Kedtkr. Be sure to download the appropriate drivers from Intel's support site. Some laptop manufacturers use a whitelist in the BIOS to restrict which wireless cards you can use with the laptop, but your particular model doesn't seem to be one of those. Your model seems to have two antennas, and the Intel 7260 has two antenna leads, so everything looks good there. Dell representatives answering other peoples' questions online seem to indicate that the 15R 5520 can accommodate adapters with 5GHz bands, too. The standard caveat applies—neither Dell nor Intel support or recommend Wi-Fi card installation by anyone but a professional technician, and there's always the risk that it won't work. But if it does, well, you'll have legendary Wi-Fi speed on that Inspiron. Mysterious FilesI am preparing to upgrade from Windows 8 Pro to Windows 8.1 Pro. While cleaning up my system and removing unnecessary files, I noticed a string of files in my C folder, with names like bdlog.txt, bdr-im or -bz, and so forth. I have attached a copy of the file names, but I have not been able to identify what program they may belong to. I was hoping you might have an answer as to how I can identify them so I don't remove something I need. As they occupy over 8GB of space it would be nice to know. So far my Internet searches have not found anything and trying various programs on my system to open them have not worked, although one file did have a note stating it could be opened with a bootloader program. — Eli Cohen The Doctor Responds: Those files are normal, provided you're using BitDefender antivirus. Bdlog.txt is a normal activity log, and the various bdr-im and bdr-bz files are related to the Rescue Mode bootable Linux environment. Apparently BitDefender just dumps all this stuff into the root of the C drive rather than in a Program Files/BitDefender folder. So it's just annoying, not malicious. GoodbyeDriveI have been reading about the new Windows and deciding whether to make the move. I have no use for a touchscreen operating system, so it was with relief to see it is now possible to launch Windows directly into the desktop mode. However, I still have a concern. It appears that when Windows 8.1 is installed it automatically sets itself up to save files to SkyDrive by default. This gives me great concern because I do not want to use any cloud servers. Is it possible to use Windows 8.1 without using a cloud server? — Bruce Noren The Doctor Responds: Yes, you can disable SkyDrive, but it isn't obvious. Once you've installed Windows 8.1, run gpedit.msc, either by typing it into the search bar on the Start screen or by starting the Run command (Win+R) and typing it there. Go to Local Computer Policy, then Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > SkyDrive. You'll see options to save documents and settings to the local PC by default, instead of SkyDrive, but it sounds like you want something more drastic. The second option is "Prevent the usage of SkyDrive for file storage." That's the one you want. Double-click it and, in the box that pops up, select Enabled. This is somewhat counterintuitive; you're not enabling SkyDrive, you're enabling the policy that disables SkyDrive. Thanks, Microsoft! |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2014 02:50 PM PDT A sizeable quandaryRe-engineering computer hardware is an expensive and time-consuming process. That's why the technology usually evolves gradually, rather than in fits and starts; great leaps are risky. When you do something novel, it needs to be for a good reason. When Antec recently introduced two new types of coolers, the Kuhler 1250 and the 950, it did something pretty different. In a closed-loop liquid-cooling (CLC) system, the pump is customarily integrated into the heatsink that sits on top of the CPU. But with this new series of Kuhler units, Antec has moved the pump on top of the fan, which it uses to power the pump. The 950 ups the ante even further by putting a fan on each side of the radiator, making it a truly bulky piece of equipment. Always happy to see an innovative design, we hoped that perhaps the 950 would excel where the 1250 (reviewed last issue) was just OK for the price.
Despite its mass, this cooler fit in our test bed, as long we installed it in the rear and not the top. Looking through the documentation and the marketing materials, one does not find bold claims of breakthrough performance or whisper-quiet operation. Antec does not appear to assert any advantage over other CLCs. But one look at the pictures, and it's pretty clear that this guy wants a bold amount of real estate inside your PC. Ironically, though, despite having one fan on either side of the rad (which itself is 50mm thick, twice the usual), we found the 950 was actually easier to install than its big brother. The whole assembly cleared the large heatsinks on our Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, which is not known for modesty. Our tall and fancy-looking sticks of RAM also had plenty of room. The 950's immobile pipes that go from the pump to the rad partially obstructed one of the screw holes on the CPU tray bracket, but we were able to angle it in after some fiddling. (Pro tip: Don't fully insert your screws until all four corners of the bracket are attached.) So far, so good. Next is the cabling. Like the 1250, it's all integrated into the heatsink—if you don't mind using only the bundled "Grid" fan control software to report your temps and speeds. We needed our usual testing tools, so we had to grab a Y-splitter to connect the unit's two fans to one motherboard fan header, in addition to testing with the official installation method. When we linked the fans to the motherboard, though, Grid could no longer "see" the fans. This either-or scenario is a bit vexing, but not a deal-breaker. Most people should be fine with Grid. You can install it from the CD in the retail box, or download it from the product page on Antec's website. In terms of raw performance, the 950 did not fare as well as we hoped. It regularly outpaced the best air coolers, but it also ran consistently behind top-shelf CLCs (both the 120mm and 240mm variety). Since the design of the cooler is so unconventional, it's difficult to define the source of these underwhelming results. On the plus side, the fans had pretty good noise levels; once the side panel was on, we could barely hear the 950's fans, as long as we weren't running them full-tilt. We don't measure noise scientifically, though, so your mileage may vary. The difference between this and, say, an NZXT X60 is only a few degrees Celsius. In the real world, you may never take advantage of that additional edge. Every buyer, however, will need to deal with the 950's somewhat-awkward installation and nonremovable fan. In the end, the 950 does some interesting things, but it doesn't quite have the performance to make up for its quirks. $100, www.antec.com Note: This review was originally featured in the March 2014 issue of the magazine. |
| Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition Review Posted: 24 Jul 2014 02:49 PM PDT Ready to put the Hert(z) on AMDIt can get a bit confusing in the video card world, what with the similar names for all the cards and the subtle differences among models. Things just got more confusing this month with the release of the Gigabyte GTX 780 GHz Edition, which was a special designation previously used for AMD cards. Since AMD has abandoned the GHz tag, however, Gigabyte figured it would adopt it and attach it to a superclocked version of the venerable GTX 780. Whereas the standard GTX 780 comes with a base clock of just 863MHz and a boost clock of 900MHz, the GHz edition comes with a base clock of—can you guess?—1,019MHz and a boost clock of 1,071MHz. That's quite an overclock right out of the box, and to achieve it Gigabyte has deployed its highly effective WindForce triple-fan cooling solution. We've seen this cooler before on the company's higher-spec'd GTX 780 Ti, so we know it allows for silent operation and impressive overclocking. The GTX 780 is in the middle of a price war with AMD's new R9 GPUs, so it has to keep costs down in order to remain competitive. The R9 290 is generally faster than the GTX 780 in stock trim, so the GHz edition is a response to that card, but since it's priced at $540 it's primed to take on the R9 290X, as well.
This bad boy boosted to almost 1,200MHz right out of the box. Compared to the stock GTX 780, the GHz edition has the aforementioned higher clocks as well as a fully custom PCB that includes an eight-phase power design for more stable overclocking. It also features two 8-pin power connectors instead of a 6-pin and an 8-pin, which helps it achieve those higher clocks and remain stable at higher frequencies. Finally, it features a metal back-and-side plate that wraps around the card on all sides, which isn't something we've seen before on an aftermarket card. The GHz edition card is one-half inch longer than the stock card at 11 inches, and costs about $40 more than the reference design. For our testing, we compared the card to a stock GTX 780 as well as the king of GTX 780s—the EVGA GTX 780 ACX, which received a perfect 10/Kick Ass verdict in our October issue. We also tossed it in the ring with a stock AMD Radeon R9 290 and an R9 290X, since they are all in the same GPU ballpark. When compared to the Radeon cards, the GHz edition board ate their lunch, which is a turnaround from what we've seen before, where the cards were neck-and-neck in testing. The GTX 780 GHz even beat the more expensive Radeon R9 290X in seven out of 11 of our tests, and simply crushed the Radeon R9 290 in all but two tests. Since the Radeon cards are hard to find and priced accordingly, the regular 290 is now more than $500, so choosing between it and the 780 GHz edition is a no-brainer, as the 780 wins every time. Choosing between the Gigabyte card and the EVGA card is more difficult though, as the EVGA card is about $10 less expensive, so flip a coin because they are both superb. $540 (street), www.gigabyte.us Note: This review was originally featured in the March 2014 issue of the magazine. |
| Neat Company NeatConnect Review Posted: 24 Jul 2014 02:48 PM PDT Eliminating paper clutter, one scan at a timeConsider the growing pile of paper on your desk. Yes, most of it will be tossed in the trash or end up lost behind your file cabinet along with coffee coasters and PCIe brackets. The Neat Company aims to tidy your work surface with its NeatConnect, a wireless scanner that digitalizes your documents and organizes them into its cloud filing system.
NeatConnect allows up to 50 documents in the loading tray at once. This isn't the first scanner we've tested from the Neat Company, but it's the first scanner we've tested that uploads files directly to the cloud without the use of any software on your PC. NeatConnect even allows you to directly upload to your favorite cloud-storage services, such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, Evernote, Box, and Google Drive. But even given the option to upload files to other cloud storage sites, the NeatCloud is the best way to maximize value from NeatConnect. NeatConnect features a sleek white cover; slot sizes for business cards, receipts, and documents; and a small touchscreen interface in the center. The device measures 11x8.7x7.5-inches and weighs just 5.3 pounds. NeatConnect supports SD cards and features one USB port on the back, for the direct transfer of PDF files onto your PC, albeit only in black-and-white when using this method. While color and various file formats are an option for cloud storage, NeatConnect is designed for document scanning, not photo scanning. In fact, the Neat Company does not recommend using the device to scan photos because it may damage them; if you're looking to digitalize your photo albums, look elsewhere. Installation is a no-brainer. Upon boot, the scanner requires an 802.11 b/g/n connection and a NeatCloud account, which can be created on the spot. Like today's smartphones, NeatConnect guides you through short tutorials and then lets you begin scanning. The touchscreen interface enables you to save scans onto the device itself, your PC, NeatCloud, or other cloud storage services. NeatConnect also enables files to be sent via email directly. The touchscreen interface enables a variety of scanning options including color, grayscale, or black-and-white scans. You can also enable single-sided or double-sided scanning, separate or bundled files, DPI resolutions of 150, 200, 300, or 600, and popular file extensions such as PDF, TIFF, and JPG. The Neat Company sports iOS and Android apps, allowing you to upload a photo on the go or to view files in the NeatCloud. We like the NeatConnect's intuitive interface, mobile app, and great cloud service, but picking one up will set you back a cool $500. After three months, NeatCloud charges users $6 per month for the baseline service. If you find that you're managing home- or small-business expenses and are looking for a great way to quickly organize and retrieve information, the NeatConnect is a worthy investment. $500, www.neat.com Note: This review was originally featured in the March 2014 issue of the magazine. |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2014 01:50 PM PDT Simple, easy, spacious, and warmIt's understandable that NZXT left a few bucks off the price of its Source 530 case, as this full-tower chassis is really more a midrange offering than something you'll be taking out a second mortgage for. We're big fans of that, especially since the case's interior contains all of the usual NXZT-esque features that have graced many of company's previous cases we've reviewed.
Think of the Source 530 as a more sedate Phantom 530. Beyond the side-panel screws, which were a real beast to remove, installing a system inside of this decently roomy chassis couldn't be much easier. Motherboard standoffs on the Source 530 come pre-installed on the tray (yes!), an ample cutout exists behind the CPU cooler for any aftermarket fiddling you might want to do, and there's just about an inch of space between the tray's rear and the (other) side of the case for cable management. Storage-wise, the Source 530 uses drive trays to give you a speedy installation path for up to six 3.5-inch drives at once. They're split into three separate cages that fit one, two, and three drives each, which you can remove from the case in an effort to "improve" airflow within your chassis. Why quotes? We'll get to that in a moment. The three bays for optical drives (or fancier fun, like all the ample water-cooling this case can support) use built-in locking mechanisms to hold your components in place; the more timid among you can also use two screws to secure each device from the other side. A single 2.5-inch drive mount sits behind the motherboard tray for any SSDs you want to stuff vertically. Additional 2.5-inch drives can be mounted into the 3.5 trays, too. Installing add-in cards in the case is your typical, mildly annoying affair—thumbscrews hold the covers in place and you'll likely need (or want) a screwdriver to take them off. The motherboard tray itself has six major cable-routing holes drilled into it, which do a great job of assisting you when you go to string wires every which way. Our standard test build for cases—which includes the use of an Nvidia GTX 480 video card—left us with plenty of room to maneuver and hide our cables around the chassis (thanks to said holes). Here's where it gets troublesome, however. The case comes with two fans pre-installed. However, NZXT slaps a 12cm fan at the rear of the case's inside, and a 12cm fan on the rear-top—both exhaust. We'd prefer to have a dedicated intake fan for stronger cooling, and we're slightly worried that the HDDs won't get adequate cooling (though NZXT does give you the option to use your own 12-, 14-, or 20cm fan). Yes, we know there's research to indicate that, despite popular belief, drive temps don't really impact life span, but we get uncomfortable without some air moving over our HDDs, especially in the stifling-hot summers. Rounding out this chassis are two USB 3.0 ports on its front, and a button that controls a lovely, SATA-powered LED light on its rear. Quaint touches for an otherwise roomy, easy-to-use, sub-$100 full-tower chassis. Still, you can pack quite a party in NZXT's chassis; what it lacks in bells and whistles, it makes up for in raw simplicity. $90, www.nzxt.com Note: This review was originally featured in the February 2014 issue of themagazine. |
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