Table of contents for April 2020 in Maximum PC

THE PC INDUSTRY as a whole is in a constant state of flux, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the staff at your favorite magazine (that’ll be the one you’re holding right now) changes regularly, too. Hopefully, it won’t come as too much of a shock when I reveal that this is my final issue as editor. I’ve loved working on this magazine, but as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. There have been some pivotal releases during my tenure, and I’ve mentioned some of those in my “Lab Note” at the back of the magazine, but the real highlight has to be the people I’ve worked alongside—both the staff who work hard to put each magazine together, and the army…

AMD’S CEO CONFIRMED THAT AMD is bringing out its “Big Navi” card this year, based, we assume, on the second-gen Radeon DNA, which is also appearing in the new Xbox and PS consoles. With no firm announcements, we have to turn to rumor and leaks. One such (convincing) leak has an as-yet unannounced Radeon RX 5950 XT having 5,210 shading units, 80 compute units, 320 texture mapping units, 96 render output units, and 24GB of memory on a 4,096-bit bus. Compare this to the current heavyweight, the Radeon RX 5700 XT, where you can halve those numbers. Apparently, it has just passed RRA certification, which points to an early release. There will be lesser kin, too: the Radeon 5950, 5900, and 5800 XT. What the new card won’t be is…

US CONGRESS IS LOOKING AT RESTRICTING the use of end-to-end encryption. The bill responsible goes by the title of Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act, or EARN IT. The goal is cited as stopping the exploitation of children online, which is hard to argue against, but the ramifications are far wider. Currently, Facebook and friends escape responsibility for the nefarious acts of users, thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This absolves them of responsibility, even for the most heinous of crimes; they are merely “providers.” This infuriates many lawmakers, who see the distributors of abusive material go unpunished. They also perhaps don’t relish the privacy that encryption provides. If passed, the Act would force tech companies to use “best practices,” which earn their immunity…

WHILE WE WAIT for the next generation of consoles, Microsoft and Sony are keeping us interested with a trickle of teasing specifications. And it’s good stuff. We now know the new Xbox’s GPU is based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture and pumps out 12 teraflops of GPU power. That’s about twice as fast as the Xbox One X, faster than a GeForce RTX 2080 Super, and not far behind an RTX 2080 Ti. We knew it was going to be fast, but what else? A new console often means binning games—no more. The new Xbox will be compatible across four generations of Xbox, right back to the original machine. Your old games will load faster, run faster, and with improved visual fidelity. Xbox Game Studios titles will use Microsoft’s new…

8 STEAM CONTROLLER Valve’s effort at a PC controller is far from perfect; it was designed to play games that weren’t made with controller support in mind. For that, it works great. $70 7 LOGITECH F310 An affordable, reliable option from peripheral master Logitech. It isn’t wireless, but the build quality is solid without being too heavy, and it’s easy to plug and play. $25 6 XBOX WIRELESS CONTROLLER Since the release of the Xbox One’s Elite controllers, the standard wireless models have become even cheaper, and they work great with PCs, too, thanks to Bluetooth connectivity. $50 5 XBOX ELITE WIRELESS CONTROLLER If you’ve got a larger budget, Microsoft’s Elite controller is a weighty affair with excellent companion software and reconfigurable design that lets you switch out parts easily.…

THERE’S NO EXCUSE not to school yourself in the ways of Linux command-line operations. Whether you’re accessing the Terminal on your Linux desktop, logged directly into the Bash shell, or intrigued by Windows 10’s support for CLI-based Linux distros, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to assume you know the basics of Linux’s Bash shell and command language—check out our August 2017 edition (Vol. 22, No. 9) for a starter’s guide if you need it—but as a quick reminder, Bash uses a relatively straightforward syntax for each command: $ utility command -option The utility portion of the command is the tool you wish to run, such as ls for listing the contents of a directory, or apt-get for triggering the package management tool. The command section is where you…

STAFF WRITER This month, I’ve been wading knee-deep through the thick sauce of Windows 10 optimization, casting my net to and fro to gather handy tips even as my galoshes slowly fill with bloatware. I love Windows 10, I really do; not since Win XP have I been able to say I genuinely like using the OS on my home PC. It has a lot of great features that I probably take for granted, from Windows Defender to defragging tools. Yet sometimes I yearn for the simplicity of older operating systems. Windows Vista never tried to make me play Candy Crush Saga; XP didn’t come loaded with software designed to soak up user telemetry. Of course, Microsoft is far from the only company guilty of this. So many tech companies…

1. MODULES Use these buttons to select a collection; contacts, books, images, movies, music, and software are included, while any custom collections appear here, too. 2. ITEM MANAGEMENT These buttons enable you to manage your catalog by adding, deleting, and even visualizing your items. Both pie and bar charts are available, based on a selected field. 3. NAVIGATION STRUCTURE Items are organized into a hierarchical structure—we’re organizing our book collection by category, then tags. Books may appear under every tag you assign. 4. EDIT ITEMS Need to make changes or add info? Navigate to the item on the left, then double-click it, or right-click for more options, such as “Edit as new” to create a new entry based on the current one. 5. ITEM DETAILS The selected item appears on…

YOU’LL NEED THIS EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE Or you can use a network drive, in which case you also need an Internet connection. WE’VE ALL GOT THAT NAGGING VOICE in our minds telling us to back up our important data. But just like using more secure passwords to keep our accounts safe, it’s something that all too often is put off for a rainy day. Luckily, backing up your files in Windows 10 is much easier than you’d think. Perhaps aware of how much passive resistance there is to backing up, Microsoft has made the whole process simple and straightforward. Once you know how to do it, there’s no excuse not to protect your files from disaster. We’ll take you through the process of creating a local backup with Windows 10’s…

WHEN WE LOOKED UP the Liqmax III ARGB 360, we found that it was the cheapest three-fan AIO cooler on Newegg.com. And its competitors lack flashy lighting. One hundred bucks for a cooler setup packing a 360mm radiator, with ARGB fans, and a light-up pump block? Incredible. A low price like that can be enticing, but it also made us nervous. Could we expect good performance from such a cheap AIO cooler? A few hours of testing and we had our answer: Yes, we really could. Compared to a stock AMD cooler, the Liqmax III performed incredibly. Nothing pushed the Ryzen 7 2700 in our test bench over 60 C during testing, even while overclocked to its max boost clock of 4.1GHz. The stock Wraith Spire that comes with the…

THERE HAS BEEN, it seems, a little controversy. Warcraft III Reforged was meant to be much more than a graphical update of an 18-year-old RTS. It was meant to bring things into line with the events of World of Warcraft, upgrade the world editor and UI, completely remaster the maps and campaigns, plus fully support 4K resolution. Whether it succeeds by the time you read this, we couldn’t say. At the time of writing, a patch had just arrived to fix some of the more egregious errors in Classic mode, such as loading into a mission only to be faced with the “Defeat” banner. It hasn’t, however, returned the missing online leaderboards and clans. The opening cinematic has been remade, but the others haven’t. The minimap is a pixelated mess.…

There’s only one small problem: Most of us really don’t need this many cores or threads. Threadripper 3990X is a chip built with specific workloads in mind, and if you’re not using one of those workloads, performance can actually be worse than its “little brother” 3970X, which has half as many cores and threads. I’m not talking about the slightly lower clock speeds either. The 3990X takes AMD’s currently largest Epyc design, disables half of the eight memory channels, then wraps up it in a “consumer” package. Except, with a price of $3,990, plus the need for more RAM and a very high-end motherboard, this takes the HEDT (high-end desktop) market to new extremes. It’s not for home users, or even enthusiasts—it’s built for professionals. More specifically, it’s built for…

ROUND 1 Value Stadia and GeForce Now are both subscription services, though the price points vary, and there are different hardware options. Stadia requires a specific controller and Chromecast Ultra, which can be purchased in a bundle for $129. GeForce Now requires a PC, Mac, or Android device. Naturally, both require a TV or monitor, and a high-speed Internet connection. Both Stadia and Now offer free and paid subscription services, but at the time of writing, Google’s free service isn’t available yet. Looking at the paid options puts Nvidia ahead. GeForce Now’s premium membership costs $5 a month, half that of Stadia Pro, and offers ray-traced content. However, the premium Stadia subscription offers more: 5.1 surround sound, regular free games, and exclusive discounts on Stadia store games. GeForce Now also…

As sales pitches go, Nvidia’s deep learning supersampling (DLSS) is as revelatory, and preposterously sci-fi, as it gets. Specific cores dedicated to machine learning, harnessing bleeding-edge algorithms, take resource-friendly 1440p resolution images and blow them up to super-sharp 4K proportions—and all without the performance hit of actually running at that higher resolution in the first place. Along with that quietly revolutionary real-time ray tracing capability, DLSS was the big selling point of Turing cards. But while the advantages are real, and available to you in a generous swathe of games, its uneven execution from title to title is confusing. In its worst moments, it’s been capable of actually making your game look worse when enabled than in the original native resolution. But the teething problems might prove trivial when we look at…

Asus ZenBook Duo INNOVATION IS VITAL within the tech industry; many products live or die based on their USPs or next-gen features, and hardware that fails to innovate frequently fails to excite, too. Asus wants to grab the innovation points with this laptop, the Duo edition of its ZenBook line. Calling it a dual-screen laptop isn’t fully accurate; it’s more like a regular laptop with a super-powered touchbar, giving you instant fingertip control. Asus has given it a funky name, of course: the ScreenPad Plus. It does act as an extension of the upper screen, so you can pull open tabs down to the second display, but it also rocks a custom UI for quick access to useful programs. The keyboard is at the base of the chassis, and makes…

Got backups from previous versions of Windows? You can still restore them in Windows 10. Open Control Panel, click “System and Security,” then click “Back up and Restore (Windows 7).” Any backups you’ve previously made are displayed here; click “Restore my files” to browse through files and folders to bring back, or click “Select another backup to restore files from” to choose a backup other than the most recent one. Once you’ve made your choice, follow the on-screen instructions to restore your data from an older version of Windows. Unlike File History, the older Windows Backup feature could be used to create a complete system image of any connected drives, as well as being used to back up and restore selected files and folders. As such, these backups are often…

YOU’LL NEED THIS YOUR PHONE COMPANION Download the app from the Google Play store. ANDROID PHONE Plus Windows 10 on your PC. THE YOUR PHONE APP is a recent addition to Windows 10, but a powerful one. It enables you to use your Android cell phone closely with Windows 10, and works in tandem with an app on your smartphone. That app, Your Phone Companion, is available from the Google Play store for Android phones, and it’s that we’ll be using for the tutorial below. If you have an iPhone, there isn’t a direct equivalent—Apple restricts other apps from controlling iOS, so it’s not possible to use an iPhone alongside Windows in the same way as it is with Android. There is, however, a corresponding app in Apple’s App Store…

YOU’LL NEED THIS AFFINITY PHOTO Find out more or purchase it from https://affinity.serif.com. CAMERA With manual focus ability. FOCUS STACKING IS A TECHNIQUE in which you take several shots of a subject from the same standpoint—usually a tripod-mounted camera—but with the lens’s focus ring set to different distances every time you open the shutter. This way, a macro photograph that would usually have a naturally shallow depth of field can be manipulated to have the whole subject in focus. You do need to put a bit of work in to create the raw materials for this one before you start processing. You need a lens that can be manually focused, a way of securing your camera so it doesn’t move and ruin everything (as much as you think you might,…

THE XPS 13 was already pretty good, especially since the minor redesign that saw Dell return the webcam to its rightful place in the center above the screen. But then came the hardware refresh—more powerful components, chiefly the Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor that has cropped up in a number of ultralight laptops as of late. If you’ve been following Intel’s latest, you’ll know why this is kind of a big deal; if not, we’ll give you the CliffsNotes. The 10th generation of Intel’s mobile CPUs are equipped with new integrated graphics, namely Iris Plus, a new breed of on-chip graphics that blows previous iterations out of the water. This is huge for superslim devices—removing the need for discrete graphics cards means that notebooks and tablets can be thinner and lighter…

The hardware of the data protection field is better than ever, and iStorage is at the forefront, bringing straightforward, effective encryption solutions to the masses. We looked at the datAshur a few issues back; now, we’re taking a look at the new cloudAshur, a hardware solution for protecting cloud-based storage. The physical design echoes the company’s previous datAshur devices, but with a sleek silver finish. It looks like a large USB flash drive with rubber control buttons for accessing the device. Unlike the datAshur, though, it functions less like a drive and more like a key, allowing users to access files in their cloud storage solution of choice, provided they have the correct PIN. Data drawn down from the cloud by the USB module is encrypted both in transit and…

> Ripping DVDs > Component Bias > Conversion Rates Ripping Delights I’d be interested to hear about Alan Dexter’s project to rip all his DVDs to a NAS. In particular, the program and settings he used. Was he ripping the movie only or the entire DVD? I am looking at doing a project like this, but I am not sure of the best way to proceed. –Wes Matthews EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ALAN DEXTER, RESPONDS: We’ve covered a few ways of doing this in these very pages, most recently in the December 2019 issue (Vol. 24, No. 12). I did rip some of the first DVDs using HandBrake, and the rips (just of the movies) were small (all less than 1GB) and looked reasonably good. The thing is, I have lots of…

IF YOU HAVE a Flywheel exercise bike, you’ll have noticed it has stopped doing all the fancy Internet functions—no more live streaming classes at home. Flywheel launched its Peloton rival in 2017, and has an avid following. However, it has lost a case of patent infringement with Peloton, which claimed that Flywheel had copied its Leaderboard, where users are ranked against—which it had. After that, the service was no more. Peloton is offering some comfort: It’s offered to swap your Flywheel bike for a refurbished Peloton one. You’re out of luck if you bought your bike with finance, though, in which case you now own a rather expensive ordinary exercise bike. Flywheel still runs studio sessions, but the at-home service is dead. This isn’t an isolated event. Earlier in the…

Docker containers are cool. If you haven’t yet played with Docker, you’re missing a large world of easily deployed applications. For example, I can deploy NodeRed, Plex, Jupyter Lab, and Nextcloud servers, and run them behind a Traefik reverse proxy with a single command and a YAML text file. If you’re running an HTPC, NAS, or home Linux server, Docker lets you do just about anything. Containers (like Docker containers) emulate a filesystem, networking, and other OS components in order to allow applications to isolate themselves from the host OS. Containers generally don’t require dedicated resources, so they’re often preferred to virtual machines for single applications. Installing web apps such as Plex or Nextcloud directly on to your OS can be a pain, depending on the application stack. Windows-esque “DLL…

> Video-Editing Gear > DisplayPort Woes > DIY Audiobooks Upgrade Advice I have a Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H-B3 motherboard with an Intel Core i7 Sandy Bridge (2700K I think), Zotac GT610 graphics with 2GB of 64-bit DDR3, and a 500W supply. I would like to upgrade the motherboard and CPU—everything else is fine. How do I change the motherboard and get it to boot from the existing 1TB SSD? I mostly do audio and video editing. Any suggestions on motherboard and CPU? –Mike Rockwell THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Things are a little more complicated when it comes to swapping out motherboards. You’re effectively building a new PC, albeit cannibalizing large parts of your old one in the process. Windows 10 can survive major hardware changes like this—the Doc has seen first-hand how a new…

Here’s how to easily access previously used commands and view suggestions: Up/down arrows………………..Browse command history. history…………………………….. View command history. Ctrl-R………………………………… Search command history. Type letters to narrow down your search, with the most recent match displayed. Keep pressing Ctrl-R to view other matches. Tab…………………………………….. View suggestions or auto-complete word or path if only one suggestion exists. Press ~ and Tab to autofill your username, @ and Tab to autofill your host name, and $ and Tab to autofill a variable. The following keys help you navigate the Terminal itself more efficiently: Home/End…………………………. Press these to jump to the beginning or end of the current line. Ctrl-left/right cursor………..Move quickly between arguments. Ctrl-U………………………………… Clear the entire line to start again. Ctrl-K…………………………………Delete everything from the cursor’s position onward. Ctrl-W………………………………..Delete the word before the…

TIP OF THE MONTH TAKE OFF YOUR SOCKS! Feels like a strange one, doesn’t it? But if you build PCs at home, chances are you don’t do so wearing shoes. But barefoot is a better option than wearing socks, because it helps to reduce the build-up of static electricity. There are more elegant solutions (such as antistatic floor mats), but taking your socks off is easier, and also costs nothing! submit your How To project idea to: comments@maximumpc.com…

YOU’LL NEED THIS DATA CROW STANDALONE CLIENT Plus optional Data Crow server (available via Docker). EVER NEEDED TO KEEP A CATALOG of important items you own? Perhaps your DVD collection needs organizing before you start lending it out to friends or family, or you want to keep tabs on your books. Maybe you’d like to make a definitive list of your music to avoid going out and accidentally buying another copy of an album you already own. Or perhaps you’re looking to record a more personal treasure, from baseball cards to stamps. Whatever your cataloging needs are, Data Crow is the tool for you. This underrated freebie makes it easy to start building and managing collections of all sizes, and thanks to some nifty time-saving tools, you don’t necessary have…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 10 Most of the options you need are in the Settings app. IF LEFT UNCHECKED, Windows 10 notifications can become pretty bothersome. No one likes to be interrupted when inspiration strikes, yet with Windows 10’s default settings, you could find yourself facing a barrage of buzzes and blips demanding your on-screen attention. Swing too far in the opposite direction, however, and you could miss out on vital reminders and updates. You don’t want to totally disable notifications if you’re expecting an important email, and things could quickly head south if blocking all notifications means you don’t get buzzed that your processor is overheating. That’s why it’s important to strike the right balance, and to do that you need to know how to adjust Windows 10’s notification…

YOU’LL NEED THIS COPY OF FS-UAE An original Amiga Kickstart ROM is optional. FS-UAE runs on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS; 32-bit or 64-bit builds are available: https://fs-uae.net. THIS MONTH, WE CONTINUE the 16-bit battle between the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga, where engineers from each company switched sides for one of the weirdest rivalries in computing history. This time, we’re focusing on Commodore. A cult favorite in the US and a computing goliath in Europe, the Amiga was a multimedia powerhouse way ahead of its time, with functionality PCs would struggle to replicate for the next two decades. From its jaw-dropping audio-visual demos, to its brilliant sound and image editing, the Amiga would quickly establish itself as an industry favorite among artists and content creators. In spite of…

AS FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS GO, the fact that it’s hard to find a PC monitor with more than eight million pixels has got to be up there. But if you want a truly high density display, your options are limited. Yes, you can choose from a huge array of 4K UHD monitors, but 4K doesn’t automatically equal high DPI. Take a typical 32-inch 4K screen. That works out at 138 pixels per inch, not much higher than the circa 100 dpi that most flat panel monitors have offered for years. As ever, a relevant but not entirely empirical yardstick involves Apple and its Retina displays for Macs. Apple has decided on a minimum of around 200 dpi for its portable and desktop systems, including the new Pro Display XDR, thus…

THERE ARE ONLY two things we would change about this fantastically light gliding Intellimouse-style model from Glorious. The first is the placement of its DPI indicator light, which is useless on the underside of the mouse if you need to check it while you’re actually playing a game, and could be easily remedied by relocating it somewhere—anywhere—on top. The other is the Glorious branding itself. Look, it’s a great peripheral maker. This mouse, its larger Model O variant, and the Model D are all built to a ludicrously high standard, and wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if they were priced at double their current tag. But there’s something about taking inspiration from that subreddit—the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race—that just makes your toes curl. What we wouldn’t give for a blackout…

AT FIRST, it doesn’t seem so savage. Snowy, perhaps, as you teleport off your spaceship, supplied by the fourth-best interstellar exploration company, damaged and out of fuel. There’s nothing to do but explore, and the first creatures you find are benign and amusing, especially once you work out how to make them fart carbon, an element you’ll use for more than just getting a cheap laugh. The world is beautiful and peaceful, a central mystery drawing you ever further from your ship as much as the need to survey the planet for potential human colonization, collect materials, and make repairs. It’s not long before you can craft a simple pistol, and when you do first get attacked, it’s more of a shock than a danger, the cute aggressors reduced to…