We also say adios to technical editor Tom McNamara.
In episode 238 of the No BS Podcast, we tackled a number of hot issues that include the PC release of GTA V and what it looked like in 4k using three Titan Xs. We then switched over to Linux's chicken-or-the-egg problem with proprietary software and paying customers. In addition, with Apple Watch coming out, we talk about that (we figure you might want to hear our thoughts on the subject). We also had to say farewell to Tom McNamara, who will be leaving Maximum PC at the end of the week. Alex says he's going to miss letting the air out of Tom's tires. C'est la vie. In all seriousness, we're going to miss Tom and wish him well. And, finally, as always, we take time to answer some reader questions.
Subscribe to the magazine for only 99 cents an issue:
Most case mods involve flashy lights, obvious branding, and a shtick of some sort. Brendon Serack's unnamed build is all about clean lines, clean componenets, and clean cable management. It may not be a toaster, but it's still a stunning rig that's more than worthy of being this month's Rig of the Month.
Brendon tells us that this machine's been in the works since 2012, when he embarked on a quest to build the cleanest system possible. It took two separate iterations before he finally settled on the spectacular system featured in the gallery below. The machine is based on a Lian Li PC-V77F that Brendon modified inside and out. He didn't like the way that the components sat inside the rig, so he spun the motherboard around with a reverse-ATX modification. A false floor hides the pump's wires and covers the array of cable management holes drilled into the case from the factory. What makes the entire endeavour even more impressive is that all of the additional aluminum pieces were cut and filed by hand.
Beyond the obvious touches, Brendon also spent hundreds of hours optimizing the case's cable management. He focused on making everything flat and straight throughout and even went as far as painting and dyeing pieces of various components to match the blue-and-black theme.
The rig wouldn't be half as cool as it is without the awesome components contained within. Brendon installed an Intel i7-4770K on a Gigabyte Z897X-UD5H with 32GB of Team Group Elite DDR3 memory, an Asus GTX 980 Strix, and a Silverstone ST1000-G power supply with MDPC-X sleeving. All of this is cooled by two massive radiators, a waterblock for the CPU and GPU, as well as a EKWB pump and XSPC Photon reservoir.
Have a case mod of your own that you would like to submit to our monthly feature? Make sure to read the rules/tips here and email us at mpcrigofthemonth@gmail.com with your submissions.
Do you happen to know Brenden M.? Niether do we, but he had some awfully nice things to say about today's top deal. Specifically, he said "it's quiet, stylish, and will cause nothing but envy to those who know what gaming is all about." We're glad you like it, Brenden, "it" being today's top deal for an XFX Black Edition Double D Radeon R9 280 Graphics Card for $180 with free shipping (normally $200; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). We could go on and on about the features, like the custom cooler that runs quieter and cools better than stock, but isn't being the envy to those who know what gaming is all about enough?
Microsoft's been fairly mum when it comes to offering a release date for Windows 10, though the company has said to expect it sometime "this summer." That's only semi-helpful if you're planning a new build around Windows 10 and don't want to bother with the free upgrade. In that case, how's end of July suit you? During an earnings call last week, AMD CEO Lisa Su let slip that Windows 10 will launch in just three months.
"What we also are factoring in is, you know, with the Windows 10 launch at the end of July, we are watching sort of the impact of that on the back-to-school season, and expect that it might have a bit of a delay to the normal back-to-school season inventory build-up," Su said, according to VentureBeat.
So end of July it is, right? Well, we still don't know for sure. Microsoft could come out and deny that Su knows what she's talking about. Or if the end of July time frame is accurate, it's not known if that will be when OEMs get their paws on Windows 10 (RTM, or Release to Manufacturing) or if that's when consumers will be able to pick up a copy and/or upgrade.
Either way, this is the most reliable source yet outside of Microsoft, which itself isn't ready to announce specific dates. If the end of July time frame Su referenced is indeed for RTM status, you can probably expect the general release to consumers in August.
Fractal Design rightfully assumes that there's a userbase no longer interested in optical drive bays. That's not to say everyone falls into that category, but with Valve's Steam platform dominating game sales and companies like Microsoft and Adobe moving services to the cloud, the need for an optical drive lessens by the day. So, some will find Fractal Design's decision to omit optical drive bays in its new Define S to be a good one, especially since it purportedly means a better focus on airflow and silence.
On the topic of airflow, the Define S with its "Scandinavian inspired construction" introduces a new internal layout providing a straight airflow path to the CPU heatsink for air cooling setups, along with various radiator mounting possibilities for those who prefer to water cool their rigs. That includes being able to house radiators up to 420mm in the top and 360mm in the front.
You'll also find reservoir brackets featuring drill-free reservoir mounting on the front of the motherboard tray and pre-drilled pump mounting holes on the bottom panel.
To keep librarians and anyone with a hangover happy, the case is equipped with sound dampening material to keep noise at a minimum. There's also two low-noise Fractal Design Dynamic GP14 140mm fans included, plus ModuVent fan slot covers for the option of additional cooling or maximum sound absorption.
There are three newly designed hard drive trays sitting vertically behind the front partition of the mobo tray. Two additional SSDs can be mounted behind the mobo tray.
Patriot Memory on Monday fleshed out its solid state drive lineup with the introduction of the Ignite Series. The Ignite is a line of M.2 SATA SSDs that Patriot says is intended for portable devices such as ultrabooks, notebooks, and ultra-compact PCs, or mini PCs as they're also called (think along the lines of Intel's NUC and Zotac's Zbox systems). The obvious benefit here is faster boot times from a piece of hardware that's about the size of a stick of bubble gum.
This is Patriot's first foray into M.2 territory. Coming along for the ride is the Phison S10 controller and multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory. The combination adds up to rated performance of up to 560MB/s sequential reads and up to 320MB/s sequential writes. Not too shabby, though write times seem to have taken a hit compared compared to Patriot's regular (2.5-inch) Ignite SSDs.
Other features include end-to-end data protection (ETEP), advanced wear-leveling, advanced Garbage collection, Smart ECC (multiple levels of ECC protection), and Smart Refresh.
Patriot says you'll be able to purchase the Ignite M2 line in 240GB ($110 MSRP) and 480GB ($210 MSRP) capacities beginning in May.
According to a FAQ published by the search engine giant, QUIC supports multiplexed transport over UDP while guaranteeing security comparable to TLS/SSL. By relying on UDP instead of TCP, it is able to cut down on latency.
In so far as latency-sensitive services like Google Search are concerned, the UDP-based QUIC outperforms TCP through its ability to establish connections without any round trips so long as it has communicated with the server before. This is in stark contrast to how things work right now.
"The standard way to do secure web browsing involves communicating over TCP + TLS, which requires 2 to 3 round trips with a server to establish a secure connection before the browser can request the actual web page," Google wrote in a blog post Friday.
Likewise, QUIC gets the better of TCP in poor network conditions as well, owing mainly to improved packet recovery and congestion control.
"Packet sequence numbers are never reused when retransmitting a packet. This avoids ambiguity about which packets have been received and avoids dreaded retransmission timeouts. As a result, QUIC outshines TCP under poor network conditions, shaving a full second off the Google Search page load time for the slowest 1% of connections. These benefits are even more apparent for video services like YouTube. Users report 30% fewer rebuffers when watching videos over QUIC."
Buoyed by the results, Google has great hopes for QUIC. First, it wants to continue to increase traffic over the protocol, with the ultimate aim of entrusting it with all traffic from Google clients to Google services. Then it plans to approach the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with a proposal to make the protocol an Internet standard, but says there are some changes it needs to make first, "like changing the wire format" and decoupling the current implementation from SPDY (another Google-developed protocol) and moving to QUIC-over-HTTP2.
The interplay between Chrome OS and Android is not just limited to the ongoing effort to get Android apps to work on the former. They are drawing close to each other in other respects as well, and the latest Chrome OS update, which began rolling out on Thursday, is a case in point.
Included in the update is a new app launcher that has the Google Now personal assistant baked right into it, enabling it to deliver a whole host of personalized info—everything from weather updates to stock quotes—to the user. This is, of course, in addition to the launcher's primary role of firing up your favorite apps for you.
Also included in Chrome OS is an updated File Manager. It has been redesigned "Material-ly", bringing Chrome OS aesthetically closer to the latest flavor of Android — Lollipop. Google said late last month, when the update entered beta, that other areas of Chrome OS were also in line for a similar Material design-inspired facelift.
Other changes in Chrome 42 include a new Calculator app and the ability to open password-protected Zip files. And another Material design-inspired move, the default typeface has been changed to Roboto for Latin and Cyrillic for Greek.
Sorry spammers, you need to pay $5 per account to keep enjoying the service
With spam on Steam getting out of hand and users becoming increasingly fed up, Valve has finally stepped in. The company has tweaked the prerequisites for lifting of limits on new user accounts.
As first pointed out by Reddit user "KillahInstinct", Valve now requires that a user spend a minimum of $5 in order for the various limits on a new user account to be lifted. Seeing as chatting and sending friend invites are among the things that are off limits to such accounts, this should nip Steam's growing spam and phishing problem in the bud.
It was earlier possible to unlock Steam accounts by activating a Steam gift card, purchasing a game, or even making a micro-payment. Following this change in policy, however, the cost of spamming has gone up manifold, effectively making the whole thing unviable.
Nvidia's latest and greatest GPUs remain unchallenged
Advanced Micro Devices will talk about its much-awaited (and long overdue) next-gen graphics cards later in this quarter, the company's CEO Lisa Su said in an earnings call earlier this week. This is significant because if there was ever a need for a graphics card refresh, it's right now.
Until recently many people were wondering if the launch would happen in time for GTA V's PC release, but AMD remained noncommittal, offering nothing more than a vague, albeit tantalizing, response. "We're giving finishing touches," is all it said. GTA V is already here, of course.
To be fair to AMD, it's not as if they promised something in a particular timeframe and failed to deliver on time. Even during the previous quarterly earnings call all Su would say is that the company had some "very good" graphics cards lined up for the second quarter of 2015. But the company is not doing itself any favors by letting Nvidia's latest and greatest GPUs go virtually unchallenged for so long (over 9 months and counting).
"So as we go into the second half of the year, we would like to see some regain of share in both the desktop and the notebook business," Su said, responding to a question from Credit Suisse's John Pitzer.
"I've talked about Carrizo being a strong product for us, I talked about some of our graphics launches that we'll talk about later this quarter. So from our standpoint, I would say the first half of the year, we had some, let's call it, some of our issues that we were correcting in terms of the channel, and then a weaker than expected market environment."
The first quarter wasn't a particularly good one for the company as it slumped to a $180 million net loss. Although a significant improvement over the previous quarter in which it reported a net loss of $364 million, this is several times worse than the $20 million loss it recorded during the same period last year.
The Firefly Online Facebook page has been updated with the news that series actor Nathan Fillion will be returning as Captain Malcolm Reynolds for the forthcoming game. A special interview was recorded with Fillion that you can check out below.
Blizzard has announced that Heroes of the Storm will officially launch on June 2nd. In addition, a period of open beta testing will kick off on May 19th. The game will ship with thirty Heroes, 130 skins, fourteen mounts and seven individual maps.
The creator and writer of the first Borderlands game, Matthew Armstrong, has confirmed via Twitter that he is no longer working for Gearbox. Armstrong was also instrumental in BL 2 and The Pre-Sequel. According to Game Informer, Armstrong waited until now as it seemed a perfect time to go in the lull between games.
In almost two decades of watching and writing about the massively multiplayer landscape, the announcement of a new project has never failed to catch my attention. That said, they don't all do so to the same degree; some interest me far more than others. Over the years, I've seen at least several hundred titles enter development. For a variety of reasons, they didn't all make it as far as launch, including some that had exceptional appeal for me.
Behind all the major Star Wars excitement last week, one little detail came out of the SWTOR camp: 12X experience gains on class quests is coming back for all subscribers starting May 4th. Will it be enough to get you playing, and more importantly, paying?
As part of the livestreamed Anaheim Cantina event at Star Wars Celebration this week, Bioware devs announced something that'll make SWTOR fans very happy - the return of 12x XP for Class quests.
EVE Online's player-spun intrigue has taken a few new turns recently, with The Mittani getting cozy with Max Singularity and declaring the CFC the new Imperium. Top that with massive-scale space warfare, and you have "the gaming equivalent of House of Cards meets Game of Thrones." (or is that A.D.: The Bible Continues?
CD PROJEKT RED sounded both thrilled and relieved this week to announce that its open-world RPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was done and a mere month away from launch.
Over the last eight years, almost 4 million characters have been created in the European MapleStory, and to celebrate, publisher Nexon has created a new 30 quest storyline surrounding two of Mu Gong's most famous students, Gold Dragon and Red Tiger.
We also say adios to technical editor Tom McNamara.
Mark your calendars?
Out with the old and in with the new
Fast upgrade option for SFF PCs
Company feels its UDP-based QUIC network protocol is almost ready for prime time
And a dollop of Material design
Sorry spammers, you need to pay $5 per account to keep enjoying the service
Nvidia's latest and greatest GPUs remain unchallenged
