Table of contents for March 2015 in Maximum PC

I’VE BEEN AT MAXIMUM PC for a good month now, and I have to say, we have an amazing team. No other publication on Earth has a team with as much passion as we have for the PC platform. And it’s not a coincidence that we’re just as diverse as the PC ecosystem itself. I think this helps our readers, too. There are a lot of changes—good ones—that are being considered and introduced to the publication. For example, our website is getting a revamp that will hugely improve its readability and ease of engagement. Our team wants to engage with you as much as possible. This is critical for the evolution of Maximum PC. There are times when some readers may get upset with certain things we say or publish.…

I’ve hesitated to write about Soft Machines because not enough information has been disclosed to reach a fair conclusion. Although the Silicon Valley startup has produced a test chip and is showing benchmarks that appear to validate its extraordinary claims, important details remain under wraps. So, for now, I’m an open-minded skeptic. I’ve been down too many similar roads before. Consider the problems Soft Machines claims to have overcome. Historically, most software is single threaded, which means the processor executes the program as one continuous instruction stream. That was fine when processors had only one CPU core. As processors grew faster and more powerful, programs ran faster, too. This happy relationship lasted for decades until power consumption soared beyond the practical limits of system cooling. That’s when engineers began designing…

How do you go about modeling a universe that not even the Hubble telescope can accurately see? What’s it like being a key developer for the Oculus Rift, and what hurdles does the technology need to overcome? What advantages does Kickstarter funding have? How do you manage over-zealous PvPers in games? We talk to the genius behind one of the most important PC games ever, David Braben, to discover all the answers. Maximum PC: For people living under a rock, can you tell us about the game? David Braben: Elite: Dangerous is the fourth in the series of Elite games and it’s very exciting. You start off with a small amount of credits and a small spaceship and you can do what you like in a 1:1 model of our…

If you’ve been in this game long enough, you’ll recognize the likes of Nano-ITX, Pico-ITX, flexATX and other tiny form factors that have been tipped at one point or another as the next big thing. Most of these have disappeared without trace, mainly because they were niche options and the costs involved forced the end user price up to silly levels. We doubt history will repeat itself with the second coming of the mini-PC though, as there’s now a real place for them. Imagine these tiny systems as pimped streaming machines, which take the output from your big gaming rig and put its power at your disposal around the home. The possibilities are a lot more enticing than previously. These machines aren’t as dumb as they once were. They’re powerful…

Micro. Mini. It’s all the same, right? We’re just talking small motherboards—a miniaturized form factor compared to your traditional ATX motherboard, which is the thing that’s likely sitting in your desktop PC right now. It sounds a bit like alphabet soup, but it’s important to know the differences. There are differences, and they’re critical in regards to just what you’ll be able to put into the system you’re planning to construct. A good, tiny case should support both microATX and Mini-ITX. You’ll want to triple-check this is accurate when purchasing a case, lest you be stuck with a mobo you can’t screw into your chassis for whatever reason. A Mini-ITX motherboard is smaller than a mATX motherboard, which is itself much smaller than a standard ATX motherboard. Mini-ITX motherboards only…

It shouldn’t be a big surprise that one of our best-performing Mini-ITX/mATX cases is also one of the biggest. Aside from the fact Lian-Li knows what it’s doing, it’s just downright difficult to craft up a well-working design in a very tight space. Sacrifices have to be made, and we often find manufacturers are a bit too willing to prioritize size over usefulness. Or, worse, they pack their smaller cases with some gimmick that’s awesome on paper, but not all that practical (or good) in real life. That said, moving from a more conventional mid-tower chassis to a smaller design doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a worse building experience. If anything, some of the more creatively designed cases—such as Silverstone’s Sugo SG09—present a wonderful challenge for a novice-to-intermediate builder to…

REINSTALL WINDOWS Most of the issues that slow your computer down can be fixed with a little TLC. As we’ve been discussing, malware can be cleaned up, application clutter can be pruned, and so forth. Still, sometimes a computer can become so completely, utterly hosed that no amount of maintenance can fix it. The only way to unhose such a machine is to start fresh with a new Windows installation. If you’ve reached that point with your computer, here’s a few things to keep in mind as you reinstall Windows. 11 RECLAIM YOUR PRODUCT KEYS It’s frustrating to reinstall your OS only to realize you’ve forgotten a CD key and can’t reinstall important software. A program such as Enchanted Key Finder (sourceforge.net/projects/ekeyfinder/) can automatically find most or all of the…

32 DEFRAG HDDS One of the oldest computer tricks in the book, defragging your hard drive isn’t quite the performance booster it used to be. For one, more and more computers now come with SSDs, which do not benefit from defragging. Also, Windows 7 and 8 defragment on an automatic schedule, so it’s unlikely your drives are fragmented if you use one of those systems. On older versions of Windows, fragmentation can still slow your hard drives down, so it’s worth running a disk defragmentation program, such as the built in Windows Dfrg. msc or the free Defraggler (www.piriform.com/defraggler). 33 KEEP IT TRIM SSDs don’t need to be defragged, but there is one optimization that can make a big difference, called TRIM support. TRIM prevents an SSD from slowing down…

LENGTH OF TIME: 1–2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: LOW THE MISSION SOMETIMES WE BUILD SYSTEMS in this section to test out the latest hardware, or to experiment with different ideas. This time around, we’re constructing a purpose-built machine. With Youtube, Twitch, and other video sites becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives, it’s a good time to think about what we use to create this content, rather than what we use to watch it. And if you want to start your own Youtube channel or get involved with video creation, you don’t need a super computer. As long as you have a CPU with four or more cores, a few hard drive trays, and a decent videocard, you can get along just fine. These bullet points are reasonable enough that…

SO, YOU WANT TO STAND OUT from the crowd and build an all-white PC? Well let’s see how far you can get. Case, no problem. Many case manufacturers make them. PSU? Check. There’s a few of those around as well. Graphics card? Tick. Harder to find but there are one or two available. White motherboard? Well, that’s much more of a problem, sir. White motherboards are like the Holy Grail of the modding world. In fact, giving it some serious thought, we can only think of two board manufacturers that ever ventured into the expensive world of producing white PCBs: Sapphire and Soyo. Hold on, ancient Abit made one too, so that’s three. And mentioning those last two long-forgotten names will give you an idea of how long ago it…

SHORTLY BEFORE THE END OF 2014, I had a briefing with Samsung. I was told about an all-in-one PC with a 27-inch curved screen that also streams music over Bluetooth without being turned on. Samsung also talked about a laptop that could intercept your mobile phone calls and texts. In the lead-up to Christmas, 500GB SSDs were dipping below $200 a pop. When this size first debuted in 2009, it had less than half the performance and cost several times as much. Meanwhile, with the Intel Core i7-5960X, we have an eight-core CPU with 16 threads in home desktop systems. Everything I’ve listed here is an incremental step. But when you look from a bird’s-eye view, we’re doing amazing things. And it’s not just the high end. We also have…

ACER HAS OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED its 27-inch XB270HU gaming monitor. Specswise, it’s a step up from its expected offering. Rather than another TN panel display with G-Sync, the monitor is the world’s first G-Sync enabled gaming monitor with an IPS display. Along with the XB270HU, Acer also announced another 27-incher with a unique design. The XG270HU, which has a fast 1ms response time, is unique for its edge-to-edge frameless display—a world first, according to the company. Built with recycled ABS plastic, it features HDMI 2.0, DVI, and DisplayPort 1.2. Both models will be available in March 2015, but prices are yet to be announced. –PC…

In all the years I’ve been covering computer gaming, 2014 saw the final flowering of the biggest changes that actually mattered. Even when PC gaming emerged into the mainstream in the 1990s, it was just expansion and growth, not change. Developers spent years chasing the phantom of realistic graphics, and when they finally caught it, designers reacted with a retreat to the elegant simplicity of the very 8- and 16-bit aesthetics we had been so eager to leave behind. When we finally reach photo-realistic 3D engines, no one will want them. We’ll just plunge into the uncanny valley. The things that don’t matter sucked a lot of oxygen out of the room. Assassin’s Creed Unity doesn’t matter, except to show that the bigs have become so musclebound and so relentless…

WITH ITS PC-V360 MID-TOWER CHASSIS, Lian-Li lives up to the company’s expectations as a top case-maker and crafts up yet another winner. The case’s all-aluminum construction feels a lot more durable than your typical aluminum-and-plastic variant from competing manufacturers. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of Lian-Li’s manufacturing process, but the PC-V360 feels rigid and strong. Its side panel pops off—no thumbscrews or screwdrivers necessary— to reveal a wealth of space on the inside. It’s so roomy (and so wide), we’re surprised Lian-Li didn’t just go ahead and add a little extra vertical space and make the case completely ATX-compatible. There’s plenty of room inside the case for a microATX motherboard, and installing it is a simple process. You do, however, have to first unscrew the case’s water-cooling bracket and pivot it…

SILVERSTONE’S PS08 CASE is simple and small. The company went to great lengths to eliminate excess space from the case’s inside, but we think the cuts ran too deep. We didn’t have a horrible time building a normal system in this chassis, but we didn’t have a great one, either. The case’s thumbscrews that hold its side panel in place were a little stiff when we went to remove them. We didn’t have any troubles throwing in a microATX motherboard, but it’s a tight fit against the start of the case’s two 5.25-inch bays and four 3.5-inch bays. The case gives you a smidgen of room to run cables behind the motherboard, but it’s not enough. Overlap your cables, and you’ll likely create a little bulge in the case’s plastic…

A great case shouldn’t be a pain in the butt to install a system in. That’s the easy answer. The harder part is defining just what that means—and how you can avoid turning a normal system build into a day-long affair. We’re big fans of cases that are screwless wherever possible. We don’t want to have to bust out tools to take the side panel off, nor do we think you should have to screw in your optical drives and hard drives as long as its avoidable. As well, we like it when a case comes with 3.5-inch drive bays that can be easily repurposed for 2.5-inch SSDs. You’ll have to screw in your mobo; there’s no way around that, though we greatly prefer cases that give you a little…

After a while, every PC starts to show its age. Programs that used to be lightning fast suddenly start to go slow. Tasks that used to take five minutes now take 10. Using your computer for anything in fact starts to feel like a chore. In short, a once-lovely machine becomes a liability, dragging your productivity through the dirt and wasting your precious time. Fortunately, there’s always a way to speed up a PC, whether it’s a 7-year-old clunker or last year’s model that’s just starting to slow. Hell, you can even wring some extra performance out of a brand new PC, if you know what to do. In this article, we’re going to share a whopping 52 ways to get more horsepower out of any PC, covering hardware, software,…

If you’ve never done it before, overclocking might seem like black magic. The practitioner delves into the shadowy, mysterious world of the BIOS, tweaks some arcane symbols, and when they resurface, the PC is somehow faster. But the truth is, anyone with the right hardware can overclock with just a little patience. Here we’ll talk about overclocking every part of your PC, from the CPU to the GPU to the RAM. We should mention that the guides presented in this section are very cursory —there’s just not enough space to really get into the details of the overclocking procedure. That said, we’ve tried to give you a good idea of the basic process involved. There’s a ton of information about overclocking available online, and we encourage you to search for…

So far in this article, we’ve taken the generally optimistic stance that every computer can be sped up with nothing more than a little bit of elbow grease. And while it’s true that it’s very hard to mess up your PC so badly you can’t fix it, it’s not impossible. It’s easier still to get into a situation where repairing the damage is going to be more work than just starting fresh, and knowing when this is the case will save you a lot of time. Here are our standards for when to throw in the towel. A bad virus infection: A lot of malware can be easily removed using a tool such as Malwarebyte Anti-Malware, but sometimes an infection is just too bad to fix. Don’t worry, you’ll know…

THE WORD “OMEN” generally connotes bad juju for most people. For some longtime PC enthusiasts, however, it evokes fond memories of Voodoo PC’s beautiful and powerful old desktops. While HP isn’t bringing Voodoo PC back from the grave, it hopes to pay homage to the Omen namesake by rebirthing it as a modern gaming notebook. Right off the bat, you’ll notice that the 15.6-inch HP Omen is one sleek-looking laptop, with its machined aluminum chassis. The anodized black finish coupled with its thin 0.8-inch body gives the notebook some added sex appeal. It’s also really portable for its class, weighing 4 pounds, 11.9 ounces. While we were a little dismayed to hear it uses a 1080p monitor, something we’ve seen dozens of times, this isn’t some mediocre display. It uses…

WHEN IT COMES TO THE STORAGE devices found inside enthusiast PCs, solid-state drives reign supreme at this point. Their performance is crazy fast, and they have no moving parts. But there’s still a lot of demand for the old mechanical drives. They may be pokey, but the cost per gigabyte is much lower. And if they’re in an external enclosure, you can have a pretty handy mobile backup device. But lately, mech drive makers haven’t been willing to go quietly into that good night. Western Digital’s answer is a unit with a built-in wireless hub, mobile apps, a rechargeable battery, and SD card slot, in an enclosure that’s about an inch tall. The wireless aspect is arguably the biggest draw. This drive can take up to eight connections at once,…

TRIUMPHS OFFICE FOR ANDROID Microsoft released a preview of its Office suite for Android users, in case they need more ribbon interfaces. DISH’S SLING TV Twenty bucks a month will get you a box that streams ESPN, Cartoon Network, CNN, and more. Sadly, no word on a Kung-Fu Channel. A SQUARE TO SPARE Virgin Train social media team comes to the rescue when a rider tweets about being stuck in a restroom without toilet paper. TRAGEDIES FAKE HTTPS CERTIFICATES In-flight ISP Gogo pretended to encrypt personal info and then swore it wasn’t being naughty. COMCAST RENTAL FEES The Internet provider hiked its modem rental price by 20 percent. Luckily, buying your own DOCSIS 3.0 modem isn’t illegal (yet). FREE IS EXPENSIVE ComScore reported that 68 percent of shoppers in Q3…

1 THE BANNER SAGA A Viking-themed tactical RPG with the gorgeous art style of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. 2 DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN If you enjoyed the Baldur’s Gate games in the ’90s, you’ll enjoy this challenging and intricate RPG. 3 DON’T STARVE Your goal in this game is to simply stay alive. Spoiler alert: You will fail at this. Many times. 4 ELITE: DANGEROUS Frontier Developments recreated our very own galaxy, star for star. This is the closest you’ll get to flying through the Milky Way. 5 FTL: FASTER THAN LIGHT Navigate your own spaceship through a dangerous galaxy in this strategy game. 6 SHADOW RUN RETURNS A sci-fi/turn-based RPG set in a cyberpunk dystopian world. Need we say more? 7 SHOVEL KNIGHT A challenging, retro 2D side-scroller with a surprisingly…

ROSEWILL’S LINE-M MICROATX CHASSIS looks pretty simple from the outside, but it’s going to give you a bit of grief when you go to build the world’s tiniest PC on the inside. While we appreciate Rosewill’s intentions— sucking as much wasted space out of the 7.29 by 14.37 by 15.74-inch chassis as it possibly can—we did have a bit of difficulty during our system building. Stashing a microATX board inside the chassis wasn’t that tough, but we started to get concerned when we threw in our power supply. Though this is supposed to be a mini-tower chassis, there’s no way to conceal cables whatsoever in the case. We suppose you could wedge all of your extra wiring in the case’s 3.5-inch bay (in the manual, Rosewill thinks you’ll use this…

NO, NO, NO. ROSEWILL gets so many things wrong with its R363-M chassis that we can’t help but think this was a whiteboard brainstorm that accidentally got out of the lab and into production. For starters, the case ships with a 400W power supply. We appreciate the move, but we feel it’s completely unnecessary. If you’re buying a barebones case, you’re building a PC. You don’t need hand-holding with your power supply. We’d rather have a lower price tag than a crappy, pre-installed PSU (with no 6- or 8-pin connections whatsoever for your videocard). The case’s two 5.25-inch bays require screws when you’re installing devices. The case doesn’t give you predrilled holes for the devices, just a single open bar of space that the screws grip the top and bottom…

SUCH POTENTIAL, TRULY. We had high hopes for Deep Cool’s Steam Castle chassis, as we haven’t seen a microATX case with such a unique appearance in some time. The Steam Castle looks a bit like someone took a Jaeger from Pacific Rim and mashed it down into a 16-by-11-by-16.5-inch box. It’s a bit bulky for the tiny motherboards it supports, but there’s a lot going on inside this little fortress. Your entire system rotates 90 degrees when you stash it inside the Steam Castle, as the motherboard tray sits on the bottom of the case’s upper-half—it’s not vertical, like most cases you’ve probably worked with. That does pose a bit of a dilemma for screwing in the mobo to its standoffs, but the top of Deep Cool’s case is easy…

Although a computer is a machine, the most common sources of slowdown are anything but mechanical. Instead, it’s the operating system and software that cause most of the problems that can turn a new computer into a plodding soul-destroying mess. And it’s those same two layers where most of the easiest performance gains are to be found. On the following pages, we’re going to look at fixes for common software speedbumps, as well as Windows tweaks that will get your computer running faster than ever before. OS TWEAKS The operating system you’re using is the foundation of your computer, which means that even the fastest software will limp slowly if the operating system it runs on is sluggish and simply not up to the task. Accordingly, the first place you…

It’s possible to overclock your memory if you have the right hardware, but it’s much less commonly done than CPU or GPU overclocking. So, should you overclock your RAM? In our opinion, no. The reason we don’t recommend overclocking RAM is a simple cost-benefit analysis. The cost, like with any overclock, is in stability. Especially with an aggressive overclock, you run the risk of wearing your part out prematurely, or of making it unstable and causing system crashes. The GPU can recover from a glitch without crashing the whole system, but not your RAM. Also, because RAM overclocking isn’t quite as common, there are fewer resources available to help you. On the flip side, the benefits to overclocking your RAM just aren’t very substantial. Overclocked RAM has faster throughput, but…

If you’ve made it through all the tips in this article, you’ve probably noticed that none of the steps individually are that big or difficult. Instead, what it really comes down to is cultivating a set of habits that keep your PC organized and efficient. To try and contextualize it a little more, here’s a big picture look at how to keep your PC running as fast as it can. On the hardware level, basic maintenance is all you really need. There are a few tweaks to be made, but as long as you keep your system physically clean and occasionally run a test to check the integrity of your hard drives, you’ll be fine. You can get a significant speed boost by overclocking your hardware, but only if it’s…

What’s your background, and how did you get into commentating for games? I’ve been commentating on games since I was 17, so for about four years. I came across SHOUTcasting via QuadV, where Deman, Joe, Redeye, and TosspoT were casting Call of Duty 4, the first game I took a competitive interest in. I enjoyed listening but also said to myself, “Hey, I can do that!” I started doing so for fun, and a series of small opportunities led to my growth as a commentator, which eventually ended with me working for ESL. How do you keep a track of what’s going on in all the various games? In shooters I tend to just focus on what an individual is doing and what their actions can influence, be it opening…

YOU’LL NEED THIS CLASSIC SHELL Get a new custom Start menu (www.classicshell.net). DEXPOT Create four sets of virtual desktops. Download it for free at dexpot.de. THE RELEASE OF WINDOWS 10 is still a good few months off, and if you’re not quite brave enough to begin experimenting with the Technical Preview, you might be sighing in anticipation of all the new features that Windows 10 promises to bring to the desktop and elsewhere—not least the return of the Start menu. Worry not though, because you can replicate many of those very same features in Windows 7 and 8 using a variety of (mostly free) third-party programs, as we’ll demonstrate in this step-bystep guide. Some are quite well known—the amazing Classic Shell, for instance, has become a firm favorite among many…

WITH THE PROLIFERATION OF MOBILE DEVICES that use micro-USB ports, we’ve had to jump through a few hoops to hook up these devices to a standard thumb drive. Companies such as Lexar have stepped in by adding micro-USB connectors. The JumpDrive actually has the smaller connector on one side, and a regular-sized one on the other. The bigger one even has USB 3.0, averaging about 100MB/s transfer speeds. It’s not going to break any land speed records, but that’s respectable for its size. There’s also a little loop to add a lanyard or put the drive on a keychain. The transparent blue plastic doesn’t exactly impart a sense of durability, though. In fact, the slider on the side that allows you to toggle between the two connector types came off…

INGREDIENTS Approximate Price: $753 IT'S FAIR TO SAY at this point that AMD has backed off its intention to stop selling the Radeon R9 280. Since it's arguably the best value in the $150-$200 price range, we won't stop recommending it. The Intel 530 SSD from last time has seen a price adjustment, so we've swapped to the SanDisk Ultra II. Lower-capacity units usually have fairly slow write speeds, but this one is an exception. As for the rest of the build, the dual-core Intel Core i3 CPU performs robustly against comparable AMD parts that have a lot more CPU cores, thanks to high efficiency and speed per core. Our H97 mobo chipset ensures compatibility with Intel's new Broadwell generation, and our case, PSU, and hard drive are chosen for…