Table of contents for July 2018 in Maximum PC

NOT EVERY PC BUILD goes smoothly Plenty of things can go wrong, even for experienced builders. We’re at the stage now that we’re not even surprised when we hit hiccups on the way to awesome PC nirvana. If you’re prepared, and stay calm, you can usually sort things out before they descend into frantic chaos. This issue we feature three (very different) builds, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we had to navigate a few problems in their construction. I also ended up rebuilding my main test rig, but I’ll come to why I had to do that shortly. The big build this issue was for our cover feature; the gorgeous, pricey, water-cooled Mini-ITX build saw plenty of challenging times before we even opened any boxes. And once…

FACEBOOK IS HAVING a PR nightmare, and there are signs it is taking some of the criticism to heart. Following the backlash against data harvesting by third-party apps, it has suspended 200 apps it suspects of passing on personal data, and is expected to suspend more as its investigations continue. “There is a lot more work to be done to find all the apps that may have misused people’s Facebook data,” said Ime Archibong, VP of Product Partnerships. It has also deleted 583 million fake accounts in the first three months of the year. As it has 2.19 billion active monthly accounts, that’s over 25 percent. In 2012, the company estimated fakes comprised about 7 percent of active accounts, two years later it was over 11 percent. Last year it…

WE TALKED ABOUT memory performance and timings a few months back, but it’s a topic worth revisiting thanks to the launch of the secondgeneration Ryzen processors. For this discussion, I used the top-of-theline Ryzen 7 2700X, with additional testing using a Ryzen 5 2400G APU. First-gen Ryzen CPUs were more finicky with RAM sticks, especially at launch, and performance could also vary. I spoke with motherboard manufacturers, asking about memory performance and Ryzen CPUs in particular. One of the interesting tidbits is that Intel platforms apparently offer far more options for tweaking memory performance than AMD Ryzen platforms—about twice as many timings, with AMD microcode handling many elements of DDR4 training. That’s apparently part of why memory compatibility on socket AM4 was initially so dodgy. With further updates to the…

ROUND 1 Library Netflix and Amazon have been investing in their own content. Some of it is awesome—tastes differ, but we’d say Netflix’s original series tend to best Amazon’s examples—and it’s generally exclusive to each platform. But the vast majority of each of their libraries is made up of licensed stuff that the companies doesn’t own, and that means that the content you get from Amazon and Netflix is highly volatile. You could be halfway through a series, only to see it drop off the face of the earth when one of the companies’ contracts comes due. The selection of movies available on each is, barring a couple of highlights, trending toward the bargain basement. And while you should probably keep your sense of entitlement in check when you’re paying…

$ The vast majority of ex-office PCs come in SFF—small form factor—cases. They didn’t need to be gigantic for the job they were designed for, but it does mean you’re going to have to think about what you’ll be able to achieve. The case design is often fantastic for quick maintenance; generally hard drive and optical drive caddies are screw-free, the case itself opens in seconds, the RAM slots are easily accessible, and there’s no excess wiring to worry about. But you’re stuck with half-height cards, and it’s imperative that you check the position of the PCIe slot before buying the PC or a graphics card. All too often, it’s located in such a position that only single-slot-width cards work, and so close to the PSU or the side of…

Not all backups are made equal; there are different types of “backups” depending on what the approach is and what the aim is. The type of backup can alter the type of transfer and how it’s stored, so it’s worth having a quick blast through the approaches. We’ve been largely concerned with active backups in this article, so it makes sense to cover those first. As the name suggests, these are duplicate files of actively used system or data files. These contrast with archive backups, which we’ll cover shortly. An active backup attempts to back up all files, and then maintain an upto-date version or versions of these according to a schedule selected by the user. Archive backups differ from active ones because they’re only concerned with data that’s no longer…

Sharp-eyed users may notice that uBlock Origin’s dashboard has a small privacy section, which attempts to prevent your IP address from being leaked via Content Security Violation reports. Ad-blocking in itself won’t prevent websites from tracking your browsing habits. Often, this is done via installing “cookies” on your machine, which allow sites to build a profile about you. This is usually quiet harmless, but if you need a life insurance quote, for instance, you may be uncomfortable with the insurance company knowing that you ordered a book on how to stop smoking a few days ago. Consider installing the Ghostery extension via the Microsoft Store to block most of these tracking cookies. These extensions won’t stop anyone with access to your ISP’s records from knowing which website you have accessed,…

FAMILIAR WITH THE broad outline of AMD’s second-generation Ryzen processors in the form of the eight-core Ryzen 7 2700X? Then allow us to flesh out the details with this new, more affordable, six-core variant. Unlike the 2700X, which occupies a slightly different position in AMD’s CPU hierarchy to its 1800X predecessor, the Ryzen 5 2600X lines up precisely adjacent to the old Ryzen 5 1600X. In short, it’s the premium six-core model. But, just like the 2700X, it’s based on what AMD and its production partner Global Foundries are styling as a new 12nm production process. In theory, the new process offers a range of improvements over 14nm, including 10 percent performance improvement, and 15 percent transistor density. But AMD has not gifted the new chip with the density improvement…

YOU COULDN’T ASK for more than this budget-end case provides for a very reasonable $70. Five years ago, a case with three RGB fans and a tempered glass panel would be considered wildly opulent, and priced accordingly. And now, here we are, in the age of flossing, Fortnite, and Facebook scandals, staring a budget case in the face with those very features. Cooler Master has the kind of pedigree to pull off such a feat, you understand. It’s easier to put together a low-end gem when you’ve been putting in the design graft on higher-end models like the venerable HAF X, and iterating on those solid foundations for years, than it would be to devise a solid chassis from scratch. There’s not much HAF X DNA visible in the aesthetics…

“IDEAS HAVE UNHINGED the gates of empires.” Those seven little words are perhaps more astute today than they have ever been. In a highly volatile world, the notion of collective knowledge bringing about upheaval is far more common than it once was. We’ve seen it happen around the world, time and time again. And to some degree, even here in the US, too, as the political landscape twists and turns into something new. For good or ill, the world is changing, and on a grand scale. As long as the digital channels remain open, communication flows, and education continues, change is more likely to occur. This is called progress. At least, that’s the theory. And although we have undeniably seen fantastic things happen since the birth of the Internet, I’m…

> Password Preference > Gaming on Linux > Which Wireless Gear? Password Picks I found your article on passwords and password managers interesting, but I wonder if you have been paying attention, because you failed to mention one of the earliest and feature-filled password managers: RoboForm. I haven’t done an exhaustive comparison between RoboForm and LastPass, but I think they offer pretty much the same capabilities. –Ben Maltz EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: There are lots of password managers out there, and most of them are capable enough, so when it comes to a recommendation, we tend to go with the ones we’ve had most experience with. LastPass has always served us well, which is why we tend to talk about it, but if you’ve used RoboForm and you’re happy…

GOOGLE HAS such a hold on search engines that we use it as a synonym for the task. But Google is much more these days, and has much bigger plans. At this year’s I/O conference, we got to see what’s cooking, and most of it is based around AI, as the battle to be your digital assistant intensifies. Google Assistant gets six new voices, including singer-songwriter John Legend. You won’t have to preface supplementary commands with “Hey Google” anymore, and it will be able to cope with multiple requests in one command. A new mode called Pretty Please will respond favorably to “please” and “thank you.” This can be configured for specific users, basically an attempt to make children more polite (good luck). Other goodies include greater home integration with…

RESEARCHERS at the University of Missouri, lead by Deepak Singh, have put together a battery design that could deliver orders of magnitude of power increases. The secret is a new cathode made from a nano-scale honeycomb lattice covered in magnetic alloy. This can conduct electricity in one direction only, and greatly reduces the heat and power dissipation current semi-conductor systems exhibit when switching. This latest effect exists largely as a computer model, but patents have been applied for, and a spin-off company is planned to turn the theory into something commercial. We’ve been here before. Promising developments, often involving exotic materials as anodes and cathodes, have come and gone. The world is hungry for a better battery; power consumption is a constant bugbear for anything not connected to a power…

WITH THE RECENT concerns about privacy on social media platforms and other “free” services, it doesn’t hurt to look at your options. And if you use social media to get your news, there’s a free alternative that’s been around for a long time: RSS. Really simple syndication is one of those seriously useful technologies that has somehow fallen out of favor in the past couple years. In the face of social media and the ever-broadening encroachment of big platforms on the web, it can be tough to find the stuff you want to read. Last month, I explored the ways that someone could go about hosting (read: paying for) their own core services, such as email. I said there isn’t a clear replacement for sites like Facebook, but given that…

$ So, you’ve got your PC home, and picked up any additional components you need. Don’t rush into anything; this is a second-hand box, and you should treat it with suspicion. Contain your excitement, and inspect the internals thoroughly, making sure every cable is properly attached, and everything looks as it should before plugging in and powering up. Run the machine without your upgrades first, to ensure you won’t fry any new components, then add them once you’ve stress-tested the base model for a while. Depending on where you’ve picked it up, you may be forced to refurbish the PC yourself. This isn’t difficult—it’s just a case of giving it a good clean—though be prepared to take it outdoors with a can of compressed air, because something that’s been running…

TIP OF THE MONTH BUILD INSPIRATION From the most basic budget build to the highest of the high end, all rigs require inspiration and planning before you jump in. For top-end systems, PCPartPicker is your friend. The best way to see what you can do with a chassis is to go to PCPartPicker’s “Completed Build” section and type in the case that you intend to build in—the website then gives you a good idea of what you can do with it. www.pcpartpicker.com GOD DAMN IT, MICROSOFT! I’m going to come right out and say it: Microsoft should have charged for Windows 10. I’m not talking about today, because now, of course, you do have to pay for a legit license. But the free upgrade over the first 12 months? That…

AMD’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT with its first-gen Ryzen processors came from one tiny little CPU: the 1700. At first glance, amid all the hype and hubbub surrounding the 1800X and, more importantly, the hex-cored 5 series that followed soon after, we’d dismissed the lower-powered 1700 as nothing more than a superficial part, a lineup-filler designed for those on a budget, or power users looking for particularly good energy savings. The reality was completely different. Shattering all our expectations, our sample, at least when overclocked, easily kept up with—and in some cases surpassed—the 1800X in our tests. All it took was a little elbow grease, some additional voltage, and a bump up in the multiplier, and bam! 4.0GHz was a cakewalk. In short, it was enough to convince this overclocking-obsessed reviewer to…

AHH, COFFEE LAKE, what a life you’ve had. Whether it was a response to Ryzen or not, there’s no denying that Intel produced some true gems out of that architecture. The quad-cored Core i3-8100 and the hex-cored Core i5-8400, to name just two, are incredible value propositions that we adored. For anyone looking to build a cost-effective machine, these are prime parts, perfect for a super-nippy office machine or better-geared gaming rig. Couple that with the well-equipped Z370 chipset, and the generation as a whole is far from being dead in the water. But as we’ve seen time and time again, the effect your mobo of choice has on performance is often less than 5 percent, if that. When it comes to deciding exactly which mobo you want to pair…

AS VETERANS OF THE magazine business, we’ve done extensive research over the years, and we know your eyes flicked to that score box down there before they made it up to these words. We also figure you’re probably tutting over a $250 set of cans picking up that sort of score. That’s too low a price for them to be audiophile quality, and too high a price for them to be reasonably affordable, right? Yes. You’re absolutely right. Heck, let’s list some more of their flaws while we’re in the mood: The cable’s a touch too short, there’s no built-in mic, the meaningless “Hi-Res Audio” logo is on the box as some kind of enticement for the unaware—the list goes on. But 1More’s remarkable headphones deserve every ounce of praise…

IPERF How fast is your network? Not in theory, and not just the infrastructure, but how fast is it in real terms? It’s a question I recently found myself investigating, and I happened upon a neat little tool called iPerf that answers just that by testing the TCP, UDP, and SCTP throughput of your network. It’s not only free, but there are plenty of pre-compiled versions for you to play with on a variety of platforms, too—from Windows to Android, with a swathe of Linux and macOS builds along the way. Basically, whatever machines you’ve got connected to your network, you should find a version of iPerf that works with it. In order to use iPerf3, you need at least two machines: one acting as the server and the other…

Sponsored by BUDGET Approximate Price: $507 THERE AREN’T MANY CHANGES for the budget build this month, which is fine, because we’re happy with the makeup. We did see a drop on the pricing of the case, down to $47 from $59, which was welcome, because it’s great value even at full price. The memory sticks went up a whole buck, but there wasn’t anything better to choose from, so we sucked that up. The only real change was on the storage front, as our budget SSD of choice, the 120GB Kingston A400, saw a $5 increase. Not the end of the world, but when you’re trying to save money, this isn’t the kind of shift we like to see. Thankfully, there was a sale on Adata’s SU650, which saw its…

YOUTUBE RED is being reborn as YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. YouTube Music is available for free if you can stomach the adverts, or for $9.99 a month if you can’t. If you have a Google Play Music account, it’ll get a YouTube Music subscription added on. It gets a “re-imagined” app and desktop player, along with some Google AI trickery to search for music and recommend similar material, based on history, habits, and even location (which could be interesting). Unlike Google Play, it offers a lot more than just the official versions of tracks; you get all variations, too—covers, parodies, live versions, acoustic versions, and the rest. How long two such similar services will run side by side is a good question. YouTube Premium gets you all the goodies…

8 UBLOCK ORIGIN If you’re going to block ads, this is the extension to use—alternative Adblock Plus is in advertisers’ pockets. 7 VIEW IMAGE Google Image Search has, for some stupid reason, killed the “View Image” button. Get it back easily. 6 REDDIT ENHANCEMENT SUITE Add a ton of features to spice up your timewasting Reddit browsing, including inline images and keyboard navigation. 5 DATA SAVER If you’re unlucky enough to be data-capped, Data Saver compresses pages before they get to you to save bandwidth. 4 LASTPASS Passwords seem to leak like a sieve made of Swiss cheese. Manage yours better with complete browser integration. 3 BRANCHER Turn Chrome’s list of recently visited sites into a properly organized and well-sorted history you can rely on. 2 STRICT WORKFLOW Follow the…

$ Three manufacturers are responsible for the majority of office PC supply: Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Dell’s Optiplex line is the one you’ll see most often, and its ubiquity means it’s usually the most reasonably priced. Look to pay around $100 for an Optiplex 790 packing a second-gen Core i5, or $10–$20 more for an Optiplex 7010 with a third-gen chip. The internals are great to work with, and they’re covered in USB ports. And that pierced gray accent panel? That’s actually pretty nice. Next up, HP, and its sub-brand Compaq. If you can find an HP ProDesk (the model we bagged while researching, for around $170), you’ll get at least a fourthgen chip, although the smaller form factor models are so tightly configured they’re not worth your time if…

Here at Maximum PC, we wouldn’t describe ourselves as cheapskates, but you’re more likely to find editor Alan sprinting off home at the end of a working day, rather than risk the chance he has to pick up a bar tab [hey!—Ed]. There is certainly a number of free cloud services that we recommend you could consider for backing up specific types of files, which offer a useful offsite alternative and other services. However, if data is truly precious to you, we strongly recommend you consider paying for a suitable service—if a product is free, then you’re the product. To kick things off, Google Photos offers unlimited free photo storage when you opt to use its “compressed” service. Google has done a ton of advanced research into image compression, and…

Users of the previous version of Sticky Notes on Windows 7/8 may want to import their note to the latest iteration. Sticky Notes now uses an ultra-efficient SQLite database, which is incompatible with the.snt format used by previous versions of the app. If you do want to move your notes across, copy the.snt file located in “C:\Users\login\AppData\Roaming\ Microsoft\Sticky Notes” on your older Windows machine to a safe location, such a USB drive. Then rename the copied file to “ThresholdNotes.snt.” Next, move to your Windows 10 machine, and close down the Sticky Notes app if it is running. Open the Windows menu and go to “Settings > Apps ⟶ Sticky Notes ⟶ Advanced Options.” Click “Reset.” Bear in mind this will delete any existing sticky notes on your Windows 10 machine.…

LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY THE CONCEPT THE IDEA BEHIND THIS BUILD is a slight departure from the norm: We wanted to find out what AMD StoreMI was capable of. However, we also wanted to extend the ethos behind the tech to the rest of the system. StoreMI, in case you missed it, pairs a spinning hard drive with an SSD to potentially offer the best of both worlds—high-speed access with large capacities. Something that would set you back a good chunk of cash if you were to simply buy a capacious SSD. So, the general ethos is great value for money, but it’s more than simply focusing on the budget end of the spectrum—it’s the best balance between value and performance out there. To this…

A FEW YEARS AGO, Valve had this grand plan for Steam Machines—console-like PCs that were intended for gaming on a TV in a living room. Steam Machines never really took off, but we’re a big fan of the idea of kicking back on a couch and playing games on the big screen. Of course, we still want those games to be played on PC. Zotac’s Magnus EK71080 fits that bill well. With a squat, black body and minimalist design, it fits right in next to a receiver and cable box—if you still have one of those—on a home theater console. Measuring just shy of 8 x 9 inches, it doesn’t take up much space either. The small size is helped by offloading PSU duties to an external power brick, much…

THERE ARE BOARD GAMES. There are great board games. And then there’s Gloomhaven. Rated as the top game on BoardGameGeek in 2017, Gloomhaven is that rarest of things—legendary in its own lifetime. The Kickstarter campaign saw nearly $4 million pledged, smashing through the $100K goal. The initial printing was in such great demand that prices skyrocketed, and even now you can expect to pay $200 to get your hands on a copy. (And not a cryptocurrency in sight—Ed). That’s a lot of money for a tabletop game, but amazingly, it’s worth it. There is so much to this co-operative dungeon crawler that the box alone weighs over 20 pounds, with character miniatures, player sheets, combat cards, monster cards, equipment, counters, and more. There’s an inherent excitement that comes with simply setting…