Indice dei contenuti per August 2016 in Maximum PC

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY Pi 2 The brilliant mini-computer costs under $45. See www.raspberrypi.org. MINECRAFT Download the latestversion from http://pi.minecraft.net. IF YOU HAVEN’T YET EXPERIENCED the opium-like moreishness of the Android/iOS game 2048, consider yourself lucky. Because, once you’ve had a taste of the thrilling addition of successive powers of two, you’ll be addicted, and addicts, like so many hopeless lovers, are powerless to abandon the pursuit of the cherished 2048 tile, always just beyond reach. Granted, much of the pleasure comes from the touch interface—there is an innate pleasure in orchestrating an elegant and board-clearing sequence of cascades with just a few well-executed swipes— but, be that as it may, the game has simple rules and is based on blocks. As such, it’s perfect material for the next installment…

BUYING A NEW HDTV? Then you’d be crazy not to pick up a 4K-capable screen. 4K HDTVs are now so cheap, they’re giving ’em away in boxes of Cheerios. Well, almost. But does it necessarily follow that a big 4K screen makes sense for your PC? It’s certainly a tempting proposition to hook up a 4K TV to your PC for cheap. But 4K TVs don’t necessarily make for good PC monitors. Early 4K TVs juddered along at 30Hz when connected to a PC. That’s been solved with more recent screens, thanks to the addition of HDMI 2.0 and support for 60Hz refresh at 4K resolutions. But problems remain. For starters, HDTV panels tend to be of the VA variety, in terms of panel. The net result is uber-saturated colors,…

ANOTHER MONTH, another mechanical keyboard. There are so many on the market at the moment that it can be hard to distinguish one from another. The K70 RapidFire has something you won’t find anywhere else, however: its switches. Those switches are the new Cherry MX Speed models, exclusive to Corsair for now, which answer the call from about 1 percent of the PC gaming universe for keyboards that respond more quickly. We’re at the stage of dealing with edge cases here, with an actuation point that’s only 1.2mm down, and needing a lower amount of force to reach that point. This may well speed up your use of the keyboard slightly, but it sucks some of the fun out of using it, too. You see, one of the best things…

SWORDS AND STEEL—that’s what Total War has traditionally been witness to. The clashing of armies across the corpselittered battlefields of our world. A world where history changes depending on the player's skill. Where Rome conquered all, the Samurai held on to Japan’s sovereignty, and Napoleon became ruler of the largest empire this planet had ever seen. Swords and steel—that’s what it’s always been. Until now. The clamor for a Warhammer spin-off has been heard ever since Rome: Total War first graced our screens all those years ago. A way to see the far-reaching fantasy armies of Games Workshop go toe to toe on the battlefields of their cursed apocalyptic world; a world so unlike our own. And, at last, we have it: the latest in the Total War franchise. A…

GEEK TESTED & APPROVED SO, I’VE BEEN having problems with a motherboard in my home system, namely the Asus Z170i Pro Gaming. By any measure, it’s a beautiful little board. It holds its overclocks like a champ, has plenty of expandability options, and generally looks killer with a touch of modding. My only gripe is the Q-Fan technology. At first, I could run the fans as low as 20 percent; however, after allowing Asus’s Q-Fan optimizer to get a hold of them all, I’m now stuck at 40 percent, and no lower. What’s the solution? A dedicated USB fan controller. NZXT’s GRID+ V2 was my first port of call. Support for up to eight fans, small form factor, snazzy design, and USB compatible, it’s right up my street. Installation was…

WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON... Does Not Compute When building a new computer, I use your reviews to help me make decisions. Typically, if the hardware in question is less than a nine, I steer clear. I have always trusted that your reviews are fair and consistent. When reading your May issue of motherboard reviews, you gave the MSI Tomahawk a nine, but for the same board in your March issue, you gave it an eight. The March issue says the board is a bit flimsy, and if using aftermarket cooling, you might want to steer clear. This is an important point, which the May issue doesn’t mention. There are other differences, which I won’t go into, but I find these conflicting reviews disturbing. How do you reconcile them?…

“Google promises Daydream will be comfortable, light, responsive, and affordable. EVERY YEAR since 2008, Google has put on a big software developers’ conference in San Francisco, where the best of its forthcoming releases are revealed. Each year, it seems to get better, and better, as Google gets more ambitious and capable. This year was no exception. The most exciting news was Daydream, Google’s new foray into VR, and much more serious than last year’s Cardboard VR. Daydream puts you inside your Android device; there’s a small “pebble” controller used to navigate and control the action. VR versions of many major apps, notably YouTube, are ready. You’ll need compatible hardware, with a fast screen, and accurate sensors, though. Nobody has done mobile consumer VR properly yet; it’s been too cumbersome, unresponsive,…

BRANDS ARE A BIG DEAL. Lifestyle, aspiration, perceived value—all this and more is intimately associated with brands. And when it comes to SSDs, if there is one thing you want to know, it’s the brand. It’s far from all you need to know, but in our experience, SSDs in a given class tend to align by brand. As you’ll see, this month’s roundup of 10 SSDs from across the price spectrum—representing many of the best known brands, and including a wide range of technologies—largely confirms this. Of course, there are plenty of things beyond brand that matter. In fact, there’s probably more choice and innovation in the solid-state market now than ever before. That starts with the immediate conundrum any SSD buyer must face in the choice between a standard…

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDES TO IMPROVING YOUR PC TRAVERSING YOUR STEAM LIBRARY Steam is the world’s most popular digital game library, and with good reason: it’s massive. The thing is, a lot of us have had accounts ever since Steam first started running, and our game libraries are hardly getting any smaller, especially with the likes of the Humble Bundle and other budget game packages absorbing our time. A nifty trick to traverse your Steam library quickly is to use the “Installed” drop-down option. Simply hover the mouse over “Library,” then select “Installed.” BUYING THE “RIGHT” GPU Choosing a graphics card is tricky. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of buying the best card you can get your hands on. Although it may future-proof you to some degree, it’s…

QA FRESH START I’ve been using Windows 8.1 since it came out, and I’ve always suspected—but never been able to prove—that I had some viruses or other stuff installed. Nothing I’ve tried has got rid of it, including reinstalling. I’m wondering if installing Windows 10 might help. Will upgrading clear everything out, including viruses? AYou shouldn’t assume it’s a virus every time your PC runs slowly, crashes, or doesn’t do what you want. If you think you have a virus, boot into Safe Mode and run a free online scanner, such as the one at http://housecall.trendmicro.com. If that comes up clean, you don’t have a virus. >> If you did have a virus under Win 8.1, upgrading to Win 10 won’t get rid of it. The upgrade process leaves your…

BOY, OH BOY, do we love streaming here in the Maximum PC office! Or, to be more precise, we love watching it. Not a day goes by without one of us casually watching the odd Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering stream on Twitch, whether that’s during lunch, or even sneakily during the day, while responding to emails. It’s a passion, a hobby, and it’s growing at a phenomenal rate. And as more and more of us tune in to watch our favorite live-streamers, it’s only right that the number of live-streamers increases as well, right? The thing is, it’s never been an easy feat to get up and running. For those looking to get into streaming, until now it’s always been an arduously complex setup process. You need the right…

FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS, the promise of VR has been bold, and nothing short of a paradigm shift in how we interact with technology. For Oculus, this is presumably just the beginning, the first step on a long road. For game developers, too, this is the starting line of a race to design titles fundamentally unlike anything we’ve played before. Ultimately, however, the games and technology available at the start of this journey struggle to keep you in the headset for more than a few minutes at a time. Oculus has designed its setup process to be as simple as possible. A single cable reaches out of the headset, before splitting into both HDMI and USB. The software is an always-on Windows service, utilizing the Rift’s headset light sensor…

YOU KNOW, mice are one of the most subjective products on the planet. As a device, they’re such an odd concept: Although highly precise, accurate, and incredibly useful, we’re never actually taught how to use one. Ironic, when you consider how we write, how we speak, and even how we type. Because of that, you tend to get as many different styles of grip as physics allow, and so-called bad habits have become entire techniques of mouse usage. So, designing any one mouse to satisfy all of those different niches, all those different people, is a challenge. The M65 lineup from Corsair has always produced an eye-catching mouse. The aluminum chassis presiding over the whole sleek affair glistens on the undercarriage of this well-crafted pixel-pusher. The 0.7 ounces of adjustable…

TRIUMPHS UBER DRIVERS Uber is testing its first driverless taxi in Pittsburgh. It’ll mix with ordinary traffic, but it still carries a driver to monitor things, and step in if required. LONGER TWEETS The limit is still going to be 140 characters, but images and URLs will no longer count toward the total. RETURN OF THE FLIP PHONE Do you miss the Motorola Razr? It looks as if there will be a new updated version of the classic slim flip phone from Lenovo later this year. TRAGEDIES CHINESE ASTROTURFING A Harvard University report says Chinese government agents make 488 million social media posts a year, to deflect criticism of the state. TESLA CRASHES ITSELF Tesla updated its software to stop its cars driving out of a space the wrong way,…

1 TOTAL WAR: ATTILA Divine—the pinnacle of CA’s excellence, with a challenging in-depth campaign. 2 ROME: TOTAL WAR Balance was nigh on invisible, but this game catapulted the series to stardom. 3 SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR Shogun was the revolutionary real-time strategy title that started it all. 4 TOTAL WAR: ROME II Buggy, but if it weren’t for Rome II, we wouldn’t have the perfection of Attila. 5 NAPOLEON: TOTAL WAR Cannons, guns, steam ships, not really Napoleonic warfare—what’s not to love? 6 TOTAL WAR: SHOGUN 2 This remake was just a little too basic and a little too simple for our tastes. 7 MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR Essentially Rome: Total War reskinned, this was a smidge more balanced.…

The Windows Command Prompt is at once both powerful and often overlooked. It harks back to the days of DOS and the command-line, and continued to play a major role in early versions of Windows. Over time, it’s been forced into the background, as Microsoft has pushed bells and whistles, but the Command Prompt has never been ignored, and continues to play an important role, particularly when troubleshooting. The big headlines may have gone to the new Windows 10 user interface, or some of its more crowd-pleasing features, but the Command Prompt has continued to be nurtured by the Microsoft boffins, and Windows 10 introduced a number of handy improvements to the console window, making it more accessible and easy to use. You can now resize the console window more…

THIS MONTH WE DISSECT... XIFIXIT PRESENTS: About iFixit iFixit is a global community of tinkerers dedicated to helping people fix things through free online repair manuals and teardowns. iFixit believes that everyone has the right to maintain and repair their own products. To learn more, visit www.ifixit.com. BACKGROUND: Around here, it’s all about gadget guts. With VR becoming all the rage, we couldn’t wait for a Vive-section. What does HTC have hiding before your eyes? Strap a black box to your head, cos we’re about to find out! It’s time to tear down the Vive. MAJOR TECH SPECS: KEY FINDINGS:…

YOU’LL NEED THIS ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Subscribe to various Adobe packages at www.adobe.com. TWO APPROPRIATE PHOTOGRAPHS Including one with interesting colors and textures. WE’VE COVERED DOUBLE-EXPOSURE images before, but our previous example was a monochrome image, so this time we’ll look at blending color photos together. Working with color files makes things a lot more complicated. You need to be even more discerning in your choice of source images, because not every picture blends well with others. We’re also going to show you a different way of selecting part of your image: drawing a path. This is a technique used a lot in the publishing industry, and if you’ve ever seen a cutout image in a magazine or newspaper that appears to be leaving its frame, it’s likely it was done…

THE VIVE BOLDLY PROJECTS confidence that this is what VR should be like. That it will feel real, and that the future has finally arrived. Right now, the HTC Vive is the best way to experience virtual reality. This is the VR you’ve been waiting for. It is occasionally hindered by the growing pains of emergent hardware, but those issues don’t stop the Vive from enabling new ways of playing and being immersed in games. The Vive differentiates itself from the Oculus and other VR systems presently available with two features: room-scale games, and a pair of motion-tracked controllers. The hardware itself works just fine sitting down and using a gamepad, but its two laser-emitting Lighthouse base stations let you walk around in a space of approximately 4x3 meters. All…

GAMING IS STILL a fairly young artform. As a result, it has a difficult relationship with its own history. No one’s going to remake Breakout in Unreal Engine 4 and charge $60 for it, but 23-year-old game mechanics can still be repackaged with a few updates, a massive graphical overhaul, and a new soundtrack from the crunchier genres of metal. Yes, it’s still Doom. Red keys still open red doors, and there’s something nasty in the woodshed. The game that ran as a 320x240 slideshow on a 33MHz 386, but which you persevered with because it was so frickin’ cool, and these days takes up less disk space (2.3Mb) than the average web page. The previous game in the series, the survival-horror flavored Doom 3, is 12 years old, recommended…