Indice dei contenuti per May 2021 in Maximum PC

I’VE ALWAYS had a soft spot for virtual reality, but it stems perhaps from something a little more abstract than what we can see today. Back in the day, when I was but a mere toddler, wobbling around my family home, my old man would religiously watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV every week. I grew up with that and the voice of Jean-Luc Picard, along with other sci-fi series and actors, in the background, and became obsessed myself. The one thing in particular that always fascinated me with almost all of the Star Trek sagas was the idea of a Holodeck. A virtual playground in which light itself could be warped into any form and take you anywhere you wanted. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the far future…

INTEL HAS DECIDED to ends its Performance Tuning Protection Plan. It will honor existing warranties, though, and the Xeon W-3175X will still be covered. Under the PTPP, you could pay an extra $20 or $30, depending on the model, to cover frying your chip while running it outside the published specifications. If things did go pop, you were eligible for a replacement. Intel claims customers “increasingly overclock with confidence,” so there is little demand for PTPP. There is something in that—chips are (nearly) impossible to burn now. More pointedly, the overclocking scene has changed. When PTPP launched, it was the days of Sandy Bridge, and chips were sold with acres of unused headroom. You could take a Core i5-2500K and wring anything up to an extra 1GHz out of it.…

We’ve detailed the hurdles VR needs to overcome to become truly cemented in our technological lives, but there’s another angle that’s just as important: development—in particular, investment. Because of the steady speed of sales in VR headsets, game development has certainly come along, but it hasn’t seen quite the astronomical leaps the main PC and console market has seen over the last few years. This means we’re left with a much narrower market for VR games than standard releases. This further damages the ecosystem of virtual reality, as it’s harder for it to gain momentum, because there’s no must-have killer app, outside of Half-Life: Alyx. The problem is market share, and it’s a chicken-and-egg scenario. Because the VR market is rather small compared to the combined might of PC gaming and consoles,…

EVERY FEW YEARS, cryptocurrency returns to the spotlight with a surge in prices, and everyone suddenly wants to invest. This time, anyone with even a passing interest in computer hardware should know what Bitcoin is at some level, but how does it actually work, and when will we be able to buy graphics cards at reasonable prices again? The first most people heard about Bitcoin was in 2011 when it jumped from being a weird experiment to having actual real-world value, reaching over $30 per BTC. Then it collapsed to below $2 and many were quick to call it a Ponzi scheme. Now, early 2021 has set new record highs, topping out at $58,000. How far will it fall this time? Will the talk of investments from Elon Musk, Mastercard,…

Arguably the easiest way to get started at mining cryptocurrencies is with NiceHash. We’ve noted that it’s no longer profitable to mine Bitcoin directly using a GPU, because ASICs are so much faster and more efficient. That doesn’t mean you can’t get BTC from a GPU, however. NiceHash launched in 2014 and greatly lowered the barrier to entry for mining. It gets rid of the worry about what coin(s) to mine and is extremely easy to get running. You lease your PC’s hashing power to other users, who get to choose what to mine, and you get paid in Bitcoin. NiceHash takes a small cut of the potential profits, and your PC can be up and mining in minutes. The company’s custom NiceHashMiner software benchmarks your hardware using various common…

YOU’LL NEED THIS A PC OR MAC RUNNING DOCKER Better still, an Ubuntu-powered PC running Docker, Cockpit, and Cockpit-Docker). LAST ISSUE WE REVEALED how to set up your own headless server running Ubuntu Server, complete with remote access via the Cockpit web-based UI. We ended by introducing you to the world of Docker and containers, which enable you to run individual applications and services within their own isolated environments for security and stability reasons. This tutorial picks up pretty much where that feature left off—so you need to refer back if you’ve not yet installed Cockpit, Docker, or the Cockpit-Docker plugin. If you’re looking to get started with Docker on another platform, the good news is that you can run it on Windows, macOS, and other flavors of Linux, too, complete…

EVEN WITH INTEL’S LATEST launch right around the corner, we can’t write off the Core i5-10600K. Although Rocket Lake is still based on the 14nm manufacturing process, availability is going to be rough early on. It’s inevitable. The last year has seen an influx of people looking to get into the world of bespoke high-end computing, and with everything else going on—the crypto-boom, new consoles, new smartphones, new cars, and everything in between—newer products are going to be scarce. And here’s the kicker: Right now, from a performance perspective, AMD has the advantage in the CPU market. If you want the best performance, you have to go AMD. Core counts, IPC, clock speeds, PCIe generations, even mobo designs—all of it is better on AMD and its 5000 series chips. That…

BIG PANEL SIZE, huge pixel count, and epic refresh rate. Good luck getting all that in a single monitor for sensible money. On a realistic budget, something’s gotta give. If you’re a gamer, that something is probably resolution. 4K is nice in theory; in practice, it’s a nightmare to drive all eight million pixels at remotely decent frame rates, let alone at truly high refresh rates well above 100Hz. You might also be willing to compromise on size, especially if a monitor delivers in other areas. Enter the Lenovo Legion Y25-25—270 bucks’ worth of what purports to be prime gaming panel. It’s just 25 inches across, which is pretty puny by today’s standards. And there are only 1,920 by 1,080 pixels on offer. But the Legion’s refresh rate clocks in…

TENKEYLESS KEYBOARDS—you’ll either love them or hate them. Or, if you’re like our other resident keyboard reviewer, Dave, you'll think they don’t go far enough, and want to chop off the top F keys, too. This reviewer, however, falls firmly in the former camp—namely, what’s wrong with a good old numpad? Well, ergonomics mainly. TKL keyboards and their skinnier counterparts position you far better during long sessions at your desk, and it’s all to do with your mouse, bizarrely. Get rid of the numpad, and you shorten the length of the keyboard, meaning you naturally bring your mouse closer toward you. In an ideal world, you should be sitting with your hands shoulder-distance apart, one resting on the WASD keys, and the other placed on the mouse, somewhere near where a…

LEARNING A NEW language as an adult can be a tricky proposition, especially if you live in a monoglot culture and don’t get the chance to practice. Apps and services that promote language-learning can come in handy here, offering daily lessons to learn new vocabulary and reinforce old lessons, so that when you do get the chance to use your new language skills, they’re on the tip of your tongue. Prominent among these services are Duolingo and Babbel. They’re both popular ways of learning another language, but each takes a rather different approach. The first major difference is in pricing: Duolingo is free. Or at least a version of it is. The free software gets you full access to its lessons—and that’s it. If you want to remove ads, get…

> 3D Printing > Wi-Fi Problems > Big Rigs 3D Printing? Please! Hi Zak, I finished reading the March 2021 Maximum PC. Your article about 3D printing asked if there was any interest in the subject. I’m interested! I almost impulse-bought a 3D printer this past year, but talked myself out of it. I’m glad I did as I don’t know much about it and would likely have purchased something I might regret later. Another topic that might be of interest to the magazine is the concept of homelabs. I’ve purchased used systems from eBay that have 12 drive bays, dual Xeons, 10Gb NICs, and so on. I run virtualization, NAS (Unraid being my favorite), etc. I know there’s been a few articles, but I would love to see more.…

IT FEELS as though we’ve been waiting an age for this. Intel has finally released a desktop CPU with a new microarchitecture: Rocket Lake. It carries a Cypress Cove core, a derivation of Sunny Cove, which was first unveiled in 2018. Originally destined to be a 10nm design, due to myriad technical reasons, Intel had to change tack and “back port” the design to 14nm. So, what we have is the CPU from an Ice Lake chip, combined with Tiger Lake’s GPU, all rejigged on to a 14nm die. It’s a clumsy compromise. AMD smoothly moved to 7nm nearly two years ago. Officially, the new arrivals are 11th Generation S-Series processors. Whenever a new CPU micro-architecture arrives, the first question is: What is the IPC (Instructions Per Clock) improvement? Intel…

VERKADA OFFERS “hybrid-cloud” security camera systems, and customers include numerous public institutions, as well as some big-name companies, such as Tesla, Nissan, and web security firm Cloudflare. Its server was hacked, and images and video clips totaling 5GB were taken from its 150,000 active cameras and released to the press. These included scenes from inside county jails and hospital. The breach lasted over 36 hours, and was made by a collective called APT-69420, seemingly simply to make a point. A spokesperson, Tillie Kottmann, cited curiosity, anarchism, and fun as motivations, along with more politicized concerns. The security on Verkada’s systems was described as “non-existent and irresponsible.” The hackers managed to obtain super admin access, so had free rein to view supposedly secure footage from sensitive locations. Verkada has assured its…

OVER THE COURSE of the past seven decades, the term “virtual reality” has been thrown around quite a bit within the tech world. However, during that time, it has actually become a rather divisive and subjective form of entertainment. Tedious and awkward are just two ways it has been described. The term itself most certainly encompasses far more now than when the modern take on the technology first debuted in 2016. Heck, today you can get VR headsets for your phone that cost just 10 bucks, while on the flipside you could easily spend over $1,000 getting all the right gear for the ultimate virtual-reality rig. What VR has been missing since its conception, however, is simplicity and efficiency, and that is seemingly finally starting to change, with better-supported tech and…

BEAT SABER This one was bound to feature in our round-up. We know it’s been plastered everywhere, but Beat Saber is just so darn addictive. Rather like a futuristic electric twist on Guitar Hero (and we mean no offense to the latter), Beat Saber is very simple in concept: Slice blocks in two following the arrows shown. But when paired with music and a lot of action, it combines a little fitness and entertainment to get your day started. • $29.99, www.steam.com THE LAB This free-to-play experience is a collection of fun mini-games from Valve—it sure has a good foothold in the VR market. It’s quite varied, with fun and playful aspects, and also involves some realistic physics, with vivid graphics. The games include Slingshot, Postcards, Longbow, and more. One of our favorite activities is Solar System, in…

Assuming you’re interested in trying out cryptocurrency mining, there’s a lot of conflicting advice on how to go about tuning for optimal performance. Many tutorials throw caution to the wind and look to maximize hash rates, with little heed to the differences in individual graphics cards. It’s a fast track to dead hardware if you’re not careful. While it’s true that AMD and Nvidia graphics cards tend to be tuned somewhat conservatively, the intent is for the card to handle hours of gaming, every day, for several years. 24/7 cryptocurrency mining is a completely different use case. There’s a reason Nvidia’s data center GPUs are usually clocked lower than consumer GeForce parts, with very different cooling configurations. Supercomputers use high-speed fans that push a lot of air through the coolers,…

LINUX ONLY EXISTS because of Christmas: On January 5, 1991, a 21-year-old computer science student, who was currently living with his mom, trudged through the (we assume) snow-covered streets of Helsinki, with his pockets stuffed full of Christmas gift money. Linus Torvalds wandered up to his local PC store and purchased his first PC, an Intel 386 DX33, with 4MB of memory and a 40MB hard drive. On this stalwart machine he would write the first ever version of Linux. From this moment on, the history of Linux becomes a love story about open-source development, software freedom, and open platforms. Previous to walking into that computer store, Linus Torvalds had tinkered on the obscure UK-designed Sinclair QL (Quantum Leap) and the far better known Commodore Vic-20. Fine home computers, but neither was…

Of course, the Germans weren’t the only player in 20th century geopolitics to encrypt their messages. The British took Enigma, added some extra bits to it, and produced Typex, a seven-rotor machine that the German Beobachtungsdienst (Observation Service) of Naval Intelligence never broke into despite reading most other British radio traffic during the war. Beobachtungsdienst was based in Berlin, however, and Allied bombing raids destroyed many of its records. This, along with the British taking up the practice of superencipherment (enciphering a message using one method, then again using another) meant that by 1944, no British ciphers in use could be read. In the United States, the Japanese diplomatic cipher known as Purple was of more interest, and the intelligence it provided was code-named Magic. Purple was again a modified Enigma, but used…

TIP OF THE MONTH CLOUD CLIPBOARD Who knew copying and pasting could be such fun? A little sarcasm there, but if you have a PC and a laptop, for instance, this could boost your productivity. Head to cloud settings in Win 10, sync across devices, and follow the instructions. It’s a simple tip but handy if you find something you want to copy from laptop to desktop, or vice versa. Press Win-V to view your clipboard, and turn on clipboard history to access old content.…

YOU’LL NEED THIS ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2018 ONWARD To view compatibility visit: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/systemrequirements.html. WINDOWS 10 64-bit, version 1809 or later. LOOKING TO ADD A LITTLE WOW factor to your images or create abstract cover art for a project? Adding a glow effect is a great way to achieve an eye-catching look. It can transform standard-looking imagery into unique art that can serve many purposes. We’re focusing on using the selection tools once again and refining edges to get a perfect perimeter. Refining an edge is a great way to select exactly what you want; sometimes AI can’t quite hack it. Other areas we’re focusing on are blur and hue/saturation effects, and adding them together to create a nice even glow and an aesthetically pleasing end product. These effects enable you…

1. FILTER VIEW Use the drop-down menu to switch between showing every container and only those containers that are currently running. 2. RESOURCE USAGE Keep an eye on the CPU and RAM usage across all of your containers here. RAM usage is a little misleading, however, because it doesn’t show your server’s full RAM. 3. CONTAINER DETAILS Any containers meeting the drop-down menu or filter’s criteria are listed here, with at-a-glance stats helping you track resource hogs. 4. CONTAINER CONTROLS Click “>” next to a container and you can access shortcuts to deleting, stopping, and restarting the container. Click the container to access its own status screen. 5. GET NEW IMAGE Click here to search the Docker hub for images you can download for use as containers. Also use this…

YOU’LL NEED THIS PYTHON Any sort of computer with Python installed—we used a Raspberry Pi. Plus some secrets to pass on. SENDING secret messages has been with us for a long time. Various methods have been devised, most with a weakness. Take the very ancient idea of tattooing your message on the head of a slave or serf, as seen in antiquity. First there’s the problem that slavery is morally repugnant, then you’ve got to shave the head, do the tattooing, and wait for the hair to grow before sending them to your co-conspirator. Then they need to be reshaved before the message can be read. Far better to use something like, paper. There are invisible inks, of course, or there are ciphers, which change the letters used to make up…

YOU’LL NEED THIS A COPY OF RETRO VIRTUAL MACHINE. 32 and 64-bit versions are available for Windows and Linux, plus a 64-bit package for macOS. www.retrovirtualmachine.org AT LAST, WE’RE FEATURING the machine we’ve been teasing for months: the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. To anyone outside the UK, this name may be meaningless, but in Britain the machine was a cultural icon. Far cheaper than anything Americans were exporting, the homegrown Spectrum was a working-class hero that spawned a generation of influential British coders. Although the machine had cheap graphics and primitive sound, its rock-bottom price spawned a phenomenal budget gaming scene. For anyone willing to look past its shoddy presentation, an anarchic game culture awaits, with classic titles unlike any other system. –JOHN KNIGHT 1 DEVELOPMENT The ZX Spectrum was developed…

ONE OF THE BEST things about computing is the way it combines theory and practice, and often leaves you with a tangible result. Back in 2020, I wrote a tutorial in this magazine about installing a Raspberry Pi computer and an IR camera in a bird nest box, to get an intimate view of a breeding pair as they build a nest, lay eggs, and hopefully raise their young to fledglings. As I write in mid-March from my European perch, a pair of Eurasian blue tits have been seen checking the box out, and with the help of a Wi-Fi extender, the box camera is happily streaming pictures live to YouTube. Hopefully, soon everybody will be able to see my two birds on the Internet. This is a definite result.…

THE ORIGINAL EVOLV SHIFT series of chassis from Phanteks was quite a departure from regular case design. It was perhaps one of the most interesting products of 2017, and came in two variants, both of which tried to capitalize on a super-small footprint combined with a versatile design. It’s no secret that we here at Maximum PC were fans of the two cases, featuring both of them multiple times across a variety of different builds, the last one being our liquid-cooled, pink, console-killing beastie. But that’s not to say they were perfect in every way. The biggest problem these systems had came down to a lack of available intake air and exhaust space. In fact, our console-killer’s original configuration, prior to the installation of Mayhems’ XTR coolant, often hit 85 C…

PROBLEMS with the worldwide supply of chips have reached Qualcomm. Increased demand, exacerbated by US-China trade relations, and the fact that Samsung’s plant in Texas had production disrupted by power outages (which cause problems that take time to fix) mean there are significant shortages across the Qualcomm range, specifically the Snapdragon chips that power smartphones. As prices increase, companies order more to avoid paying more later, and it gets worse. By the second quarter, the shortages will reach the market, with 5G phones hardest hit—production is due to fall by around 30 percent. Elsewhere, shortages continue to worsen. General Motors has even started selling some pickups minus a fuel management chip. Lead times on some minor components have reached 11 months; other vital chips, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and power…

IN LAST MONTH’S TRADE CHAT, I discussed the merits of gaming in a world where consoles are reaching parity with their PC cousins. Long story short, yes—PC gaming is still “worth it” in many ways. But when it comes to playing, archiving, and discovering retro games, it’s invaluable. When it comes to the classics of yesteryear, no platform is doing its part to help preserve and make retro games available more than PC. If you’re looking to step into a wonderland of ’90s point-and-click adventures or classic shooters, you need only an Internet connection. Simply put, the PC ecosystem is the best possible place to take refuge from the frustrations of modern gaming. If you routinely find yourself saddled with the insatiable desire to dive into the classics, you should regularly…

Virtual reality seems to fall short in areas other than what you experience when you’re wearing the headset. To be frank, paired with a capable PC and using the latest gear, such as the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite or HP’s Reverb G2, which we test in this feature, VR gameplay is very solid and enjoyable on the whole. That, however, is part of the problem. For the vast majority of folk, who aren’t as into PCs as us enthusiasts, you also need to get a fairly powerful, usually expensive, rig to pair with your brand-new tethered headset in order to get the premium experience. The high frame rates that give you a smooth VR experience rely on a fairly powerful setup. Running on any old office PC just won’t be…

We’ve focused most of our efforts on the description of mining with GPUs, but originally Bitcoin was designed to be mined using CPUs. It just so happened that with GPUs becoming increasingly programmable, software developers figured out they could get 10, 100, or maybe even 1,000 times the performance of a CPU by doing the calculations on a GPU. But GPUs aren’t optimized for doing just cryptographic hashing calculations—there’s a whole bunch of extra stuff for textures, 3D graphics, anti-aliasing, ray tracing, and so on. What if you stripped out all of those unnecessary capabilities and focused on creating a chip that was only good at one thing: cryptographic hashing? It would be faster than a GPU, potentially mining even more Bitcoins! Not surprisingly, lots of others felt like this…

Being the root of evil and all, whenever money is involved, things can turn nasty. So, when the big players in the enterprise and business markets began to see Linux distros as a threat, lawyers were called. A series of leaked Microsoft memos from August 1998, known as the Halloween Documents for the date they were released, detailed Microsoft’s private worries that Linux, and open-source development in general, was a direct threat to its business, along with ways to combat its uptake. This private view was in direct conflict with the company’s public line on the matter; though Steve Ballmer famously called Linux a cancer in 2001. The documents are available at www.catb.org/~esr/halloween, and in them Microsoft predicted that “Linux is on track to eventually own the x86 UNIX market….”…

They say you should keep business and pleasure separate—not in this industry. I love working from home; being next to the kitchen certainly has its perks! Going into the office with the team will have its advantages, of course, and I’m looking forward to it, but my home setup is getting pretty good. I’ve just switched from the 34-inch MSI PS341WU monitor to a 37.5-inch HP Z38c curved display. At this rate, I’ll be using a projector by Christmas! With some of the testing I have been doing, paired with a very capable PC, I’ve been able to revisit some games of yesteryear the way they were intended to be played. I’ve sunk myself into Alien Isolation once again. It’s a game I shouldn’t enjoy, considering it scares me to…

The beauty of Docker is that it works across Windows, Mac, and Linux, and you don’t need Cockpit-Docker to provide yourself with a graphical front end. Windows and Mac users get such a front end by installing Docker Desktop (www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop), while Docker functionality—complete with web-based UI—is also available for QNAP (Container Station) and Synology (Docker) NAS drives. There are plenty of alternatives, too—many of which also work with different flavors of Linux. If you’re looking for a web-based UI, then Portainer Community Edition (www.portainer.io) is the tool of choice for many. It has all the options you’ll find in Docker-Cockpit, and more besides. It’s installed as a standalone Docker container: $ docker volume create portainer_data $ docker run-d-p8000:8000-p9000:9000--name=portainer-restart=always-v/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock-vportainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce After installation, access it through your web browser: http://192.168.x.y:9000. Whichever front…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-4 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: HARD THE CONCEPT THERE’S NO QUESTION that we’ve long been big fans of the Phanteks Shift line-up of chassis. Over the last few years, it’s certainly featured in a number of our builds. It’s one of those cases that really sparks the imagination when considering the potential of a system. That eccentric monolithic design was perhaps the first case to reimagine what an ITX chassis could look like, and how it could function. It doesn’t look quite so distinctive nowadays, with the likes of the NZXT H1, Corsair One, and Xbox Series X all featuring a similar sort of look and feel, but there’s no denying that even today, the Shift still flaunts a certain amount of flair, even with the heavy competition…

SINCE GIGABYTE debuted the world’s first RTX-based laptop in 2020, it’s been pushing the boundaries of performance in this form factor. With the new Aorus line-up comes high-performance GeForce RTX 3000-series laptop GPUs, and in this 17G model, we’re blessed with an RTX 3070. Should be interesting. First we have to address the elephant in the room: The 17G is huge. But is that such a bad thing? Its large size and chunkier body provide more airflow, resulting in better cooling. And the build quality is superb, with a unibody design that feels incredibly rigid and reassuringly solid, though it’s a little heavy. You wouldn’t want to sling this in a backpack on your commute—even if you could fit it in; it’s more of a “put it anywhere and play” size.…

HTC HAS BEEN AT the forefront of the “new-era” VR race since 2016, when it originally launched its first headset, the Vive. Since then, alongside the likes of Oculus, HP, and more, it has been constantly evolving its systems to improve the overall virtual experience. The Cosmos Elite is the result of more than five years of development time, and is the company’s top game-focused headset, designed to deliver ultimate precision for elite VR gamers with SteamVR tracking support. Is this the case, though? Does it finally provide a seamless immersive experience? After all, that’s the goal for virtual reality. Setting up VR can be a pain—cables, sensors, making sure you have enough room, and so on. There’s no change with the Cosmos Elite. Luckily, the numbered box design makes…

WE HAVEN’T HAD much experience with Endgame Gear or its mice, but a search reveals that it’s a German company with very strong links to Caseking and sister companies. Caseking is one of the largest European PC enthusiast suppliers and, as such, has the financial backing and knowledgeable staff to create some impressive products. The Endgame Gear XM1 RGB Dark Frost seems to be one of the products that’s been done right, and hopefully we’ll see more of them. Visually, the XM1 RGB looks very simple, and similar to a whole host of mice. It has the standard five-button layout, and all the switches feel crisp and satisfying. Our particular model, the Dark Frost, is semi-transparent, and once the lighting shines through, it creates some great effects. This mouse isn’t…

WHILE ELITE: DANGEROUS has its charms, we can’t put our finger on a space shooter that’s really got under our skin since Freelancer—and that was an embarrassingly long time ago. And while the first Everspace was a fairly simple affair, in which you fought battles to accumulate credits and ship parts, but lost all except the cash if you died, this sequel has made the excellent decision to explore third-person open-world RPG territory, having Kickstartered itself into orbit. It’s also in Early Access, which means the game is not finished, and the expected completion date is sometime in 2022. Getting into a game—particularly paying money for one—at this stage is a risk, as you’re likely to encounter bugs, and have your save wiped by a patch that changes something deep…