Table of contents for July 2017 in Maximum PC

IF I HAD TO PICK A GOOD TIME to build a computer system, today is likely better than any day in the past 10 years. That’s not to say that things haven’t been exciting in the last decade—sure, we’ve gotten lots of products. But what makes today special is the fact that I believe AMD and Intel are on a path to collide Intel has had many missteps over the last few years. It may not seem that way if you’re only looking at the desktop space, but in other tech areas, Intel has lost to other companies. Qualcomm sits comfortably on its mobile chip throne, and Nvidia is making great strides in AI and big computing. For such a giant company as Intel, it’s a painful reminder that staying…

GOOGLE’S FORTHCOMING DAYDREAM 2.0 will include a full stand-alone headset—no phone, no wires, nothing else required. The WorldSense tracking system uses motion detectors working with two wide-angle cameras, which use your physical surroundings as reference points. Google promises “robust low-latency tracking for games.” The headset runs Android O. You can take snapshots and videos as you go, as well as Chromecast to a compatible screen, so friends can see what made you squeal. Chrome VR adds 3D browsing, and YouTube VR brings shared “rooms” for your real virtual friends. A reference design that uses a Snapdragon 835 chip is being developed with Qualcomm. HTC, Vive, and Lenovo are working on retail headsets, which should be here “within months.” It all sounds rather neat. VR is struggling to get beyond the…

Reactions have ranged from the expected shock and disappointment, to an indifferent shrug. There are many reasons to ditch the yearly conference, and the last two IDFs have been weird hodgepodges of IoT and mobile talk that never seems to go anywhere, mixed in with a few presentations on new processors and fabrication technologies. As an example, two years ago, everyone at IDF got a Basis Peak smartwatch, which was later recalled due to overheating/burn problems that couldn’t be fixed. Oops. But as IDF closes its doors, Nvidia’s yearly GPU Technology Conference (GTC) is becoming increasingly important. GPUs are outpacing the growth of other processors, and they happen to be extremely useful for one of the hottest research areas: machine learning and AI. SkyNet fearmongers will want to turn the…

If you’ve not yet done so, set up file sharing by clicking the network icon in the Taskbar Notification area and choosing “Network & Internet settings,” then clicking “Sharing options.” Expand “Private” to verify file and printer sharing is switched on, along with network discovery. Ignore HomeGroup connections, then expand “All Networks” to disable public folder sharing, ensure 128-bit encryption is enabled, and switch on password-protected sharing for security reasons. It’s no longer compulsory, but a good idea to verify all your computers are on the same workgroup—WORKGROUP by default, but if you change it to something else, repeat for all the PCs in your network. Type “workgroup” into the “Search” box and click “Change workgroup name” to do so. Forgotten which folders you’ve shared? Windows no longer displays a folder…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY THE CONCEPT WE’RE ALWAYS COMPARING hardware here on Maximum PC. Every review, build, and feature sees us comparing components, or whole systems, against what has gone before; either explicitly when picking components, or more subtly when alluding to performance metrics. Even so, it’s rare that we actually go head to head against another machine in the same issue, yet that’s exactly what we’re doing here: two machines aimed at solving the same problems, but only one can be considered the winner. That’s the ethos behind the cover feature this month, and to some extent, that forms what has gone into these two builds. However, when it comes to piecing together this Ryzen build and the Intel one on page 70, they…

THIS BUILD WAS A RELATIVE cake walk to produce. There were conundrums and problems that needed solving, mostly to do with that insane NH-D15 cooler being a little too chunky in various places, but otherwise nothing really stood out in terms of difficulty. Ideally, we would have loved to have gone with a case with a touch more storage potential, but you should be running your backups away from your main system in this working environment anyway. Replace that meager 2TB with a 6TB or higher WD Black, and it should be plenty for any onsite storage. The biggest advantage of using the X99-E- 10G WS, however, comes in the form of those dual 10GbE connections in the back. What they do is make offsite storage a potential reality for…

SPOTIFY I recently had the pleasure of introducing old papa Storey to the wonders of Spotify. After him clamoring about “where exactly I import my music from nowadays,” I pointed him in the direction of my favorite streaming service. You may remember a while back, I was a big advocate of Tidal. Its FLAC quality audio was impressive. However, over time, two things put me off. First, a lack of Metallica, and second, the $20 a month for the HRA good stuff. I swapped to Spotify on a trial account to give it a shot, and haven’t looked back since. It’s a great service. I pay $15 a month for the Family bundle, allowing myself and four others (people living at the same address) access to Spotify’s premium features, including…

the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are small BE HONEST NOW, did you think Google’s Chrome OS would be a success when it arrived in 2011? A Linux-based OS designed around a browser, a bit too taxing for phones, and too limited on laptops. Even so, second–gen Chromebooks achieved decent sales, and now it’s a success in one large and important sector of the market: education. Students have flocked to cheap and cheerful $200 Chromebooks. Microsoft has cooked up a response with Windows S. What is the “S” for? Well, officially it doesn’t stand for anything, but the blurb repeatedly states that Windows S is streamlined for security and superior performance. Student and store are more apt. “Streamlined” is, of course, another word for simplified. It’s designed to…

ON MAY 12, WannaCry infected around 200,000 machines in the largest ransomware attack to date. Through a vulnerability in the Server Message Block, WannaCry sent a worm through infected systems, scrambling files, before demanding $300 in Bitcoins. It used two vulnerabilities, EternalBlue and DoublePulsar, which had been stolen from the National Security Agency. Win 7 PCs without the latest patch (issued on March 14) took 98 percent of the hits. Once the panic died down, the end results proved mundane. Under $100,000 in Bitcoin was paid out. A nebulous group of hackers, the Lazarus Group, with probable links to North Korea, had been cited as a possible culprit, although only through similarities in the code. What did we learn? Well, as Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, points out, the NSA needs…

First off, there’s no big cosmetic change. Ubuntu still ships with and defaults to Unity 7. While 17.04 ships with a preview of Unity 8 (as 16.10 did in October), it is not the default desktop, and it still has a few quirks. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the shipment of Ubuntu 17.04 came days after Canonical announced it would be dropping the Unity project. The impending doom of Unity came as a shock to those who grew to love Unity 8. It also means Canonical is dropping the goal of convergence—the idea that desktops and mobile devices should use one, seamless OS. After the death of Firefox OS, Ubuntu was the only viable open-source alternative to Android. Now it will never go mainstream. Canonical has said that come…

There are several tools and techniques you can employ to benchmark your network performance and range. Find out how fast your Internet connection is compared to what your Internet provider claims by visiting www.lifewire.com/ benchmark-2626177. If you’re benchmarking with a view to streaming video, consider 5Mb/s a reasonable requirement for a single HD stream from the likes of Netflix. The demands scale up for Ultra 4K—25Mb/s—but for most people, you don’t need a superfast connection for one or two streams. One figure worth noting is the upload speed— this is always much lower than the download speed, but could be critical if you plan to stream video over the Internet from your network. How can you test the strength of your Wi-Fi signal in different parts of your home? Install the…

Applications and services such as Plex are simple and relatively safe to set up for remote access, although it pays to keep an eye on any reported vulnerabilities, then disable the service until they’ve been patched. One of the reasons they’re safer is that you can only access them with your user credentials using an app or specific web address (such as Plex Media Player and https://plex.tv/web). They can’t then leverage that connection to do anything else. Other services, such as logging on to your NAS or even your router, are trickier, because anyone with a web browser, knowledge of your IP address or DDNS address can attempt to log on—or bruteforce their way—to your device. If you are opening up a device for outside access, you’ll almost certainly want to…

THE BIG SELLING POINT OF RYZEN is the multithreaded performance at a great price. This machine promotes that ethos in a succinct way without compromising in order to get its point across—you could definitely build a cheaper workstation with the same core, but it wouldn’t be as rounded a machine. This is a PC that has an eye on its price tag, while knocking out solid performance at the same time. The build itself was surprisingly straightforward, with the Corsair Carbide Air 740 making for a great basis for a clean build. After constructing so many ITX systems, it’s refreshing to have so much room around the motherboard. If you’re going to augment your own workstation with plenty of SSDs and hard drives, this comes heartily recommended— although if you…

IT’S NOT EVERY DAY we get something as exceptional as this. A board that challenges all logic, positioned so high on the economic spectrum only the rich kids of Instagram and those really looking to burn holes in their pockets can attest to its brilliance. This is, without doubt, a ridiculous board. Not in the same way as Asus’s X99- E-10G workstation motherboard, but in a ludicrous concept kinda deal. It’s a well established fact that gaming benefits from higher performing single cores than slower performing multi cores, as found in the Broadwell-E and the X99 platform. That’s not to say that this dollar-burning combo is particularly bad at gaming, merely that it’s unnecessary. For the purist, there’s no logical reason to spend all that extra cash on an eight-core…

THE HYSTERIA surrounding smartwatches has finally calmed to the point where we can start looking at them objectively. The potential for something like the Apple Watch is undeniable, but it seems realizing that potential is tougher than expected. Throw in the considerable $269 price, and it’s easy to see why such devices haven’t quite taken off. We haven’t written off the genre, though, as the inclusion of the Xiaomi Mi Band 2 proves. Here’s a cheap and cheerful device that does so much well, that we can forgive it some of its shortcomings. True, it isn’t anywhere as versatile as some of the more expensive offerings, but what it does, it does well. Predominantly a step-counter and heart rate monitor, this is a smartwatch (it tells the time, too) that…

With all the concerns about privacy on the Internet, it is easy to make the argument for a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to keep your data encrypted and safe. The general concern among gamers is that, aside from the disadvantages of cost and complexity, a VPN can cause a speed slowdown. In our recent Best VPN for PC Gaming Guide, none of our tested VPN services provided full download speeds. So, in the end, it becomes a balance between speed and privacy, but there are some techniques to preserve throughput, and minimize lag. There are also some less obvious advantages to gaming on a VPN, such as having access to a better server, getting around countries that block certain games, protection from DDoS attacks on the game server, and avoiding…

SINCE THE LAUNCH of Ryzen, we’ve seen a hectic round of new processors, and it shows no sign of slowing this year. Both Intel and AMD have new top-end silicon on the way, and both have turned things up to 9. As expected, Intel has brought forward its release schedule. A leaked internal slide is revealing (if you are serious about security, guys, you need to confiscate phones). There is a pair of four-core Kaby Lake-X chips, branded i7-7740K and i7-7640K, running at 4.3 and 4.0GHz. And four new Skylake-X chips move to the new Core i9 moniker: There’s a six-core i9-7800X, eight-core i9- 7820X, 10-core i9-7900X, and, at the top of the tree, a 12-core i9-7920X. Base clock speeds start at 3.3GHz and run to 3.6GHz. Boost speeds on…

TRIUMPHS BITCOIN HITS $2,000 The digital currency has doubled in value in under a year, a long way from 2010’s value of 0.003 cents. BLACKBERRY IS BACK Miss those little buttons? The new BlackBerry KEYone is a full Android smartphone with mini keyboard—excellent, but $549. FLYING CARS Design sketches for a flying car to be used in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony look like giant drones you can sit in. TRAGEDIES LAPTOPS WITH KEYLOGGER HP has accidentally sold laptops with keylogger software embedded in the audio drivers, which could be used maliciously. APPLE VS. REPAIRMEN Apple is busy lobbying against any legislation concerning the right to repair hardware, especially New York’s Fair Repair Act. NO NEUTRALS The FFC is dismantling net neutrality, despite the efforts of its head to…

7 THE OG SURFACE Not a tablet, but a table—Microsoft’s 2008 Surface was certainly an interesting idea, but its $10,000 price point excluded it from all but the most affluent homes. 6 SURFACE RT The Surface Laptop isn’t alone in pushing a closed ecosystem: this store-hobbled ARM tablet ran like a dog, and sold like one, too. 5 XBOX The big black box launched Microsoft’s console empire, but weighed as much as a refrigerator, and sold fewer than 500,000 units in game-mad Japan. 4 THE MICROSOFT MOUSE Microsoft’s first mouse, the “Green-Eyed Monster,” came with a free gift for regular users: carpal tunnel syndrome. It hurts just to look at it. 3 EASYBALL This trackball was so light, it did barely more than slide around your desk, and it only…

WE’VE SPENT THE LAST THREE ISSUES bigging up how important Ryzen is in the grand scheme of processor development. Without it, Intel’s price gouging would likely have continued for the foreseeable future, with the red prodigy being relegated to a footnote in computing history. Ryzen, for better or worse, has changed everything, giving Intel’s R&D labs the gusto to push forward with core count and chip design, and reintroducing choice into an otherwise stagnant decision-making process. No longer is system spec purely tied to how much money you want to spend on an Intel chip, but which CPU you believe is right for you. With most multithreading professionals looking toward Ryzen for its cheap and affordable multicore applicational use, the question is, does it warrant the fanfare it’s received so…

How do computers talk to each other over networks and the Internet? The answer is through the TCP/IP model. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is the method used by computers to connect over networks, while IP (Internet Protocol) is the way in which data is transferred using “packets” of information. This model can be broken down into four basic layers: Application, Transport, Internet, and Network Access. At the top is the Application layer, which splits into three basic elements. At the very top sit the programs you use to access the Internet, such as your email client. Beneath this is the “presentation” element, where data is translated into a suitable format for sending over the network—if it needs compressing or encrypting, that happens here. Then there’s the “session” element, which determines the…

If you’re happy with your router’s hardware specification, but disappointed with its configuration utility or the tools it offers, you may be able to get a free “upgrade” without having to shell out for a whole new router. Alternatively, you could breathe life into an old router by converting it into a wireless repeater or VPN server, thanks to the broad range of additional features provided by a community-built open-source firmware called dd-wrt. Start by visiting www.dd-wrt.com and clicking the “Router Database” link. Type the first few letters of your manufacturer or model to see if it’s in the database and whether or not it’s supported (make note of any revision numbers, and verify your router is the same revision, usually by checking the label underneath it). While most manufacturers are…

If you experience discomfort or sickness while using this guide, there are a few things to try. First, check your headset; if you can adjust the focal length and width of your lenses to suit the width of your pupils, do so. Then use the “IPD” slider on Trinus’s main tab to adjust it in software— you can scroll with your mouse wheel to get it just right. Next, head to the “Sensors” tab, and adjust the sliders to increase or reduce the feedback your cell’s gyro gives to Trinus. Head tracking is a tricky thing to nail down, and finding the sweet spot here should make your experience a lot more comfortable. You may or may not find that setting a dead zone, reducing wobble in-game, helps slightly, and…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY THE CONCEPT THIS IS IT: the head-to-head. The buildoff. To hell with gaming, it’s Ryzen versus Intel. X370 versus X99. Chipset versus chipset. A superstar competition to determine the definitive champion of the workstation marketplace. Whether it’s photo manipulation, 4K video editing, or the most advanced calculative tasks, we’re pitting two of the gnarliest top-end Ryzen and Intel systems against each other in an epic battle to the FPU death. After spending the last few issues gushing over Ryzen’s positive performance prowess, it was this hardware reviewer’s duty to take on team blue for our challenge. And, boy, did we call in the big guns: 10 cores, 20 threads, 64GB of high-spec DDR4 memory (we did consider 128GB but, well, we…

IT’S BEEN ALMOST 14 months since Nvidia launched its GTX 1080 GPU, and in that time AMD has released diddly-squat to challenge it. Leaving the high-end marketplace to be monopolized by the gargantuan green giant, it seems that just as AMD has regained some ground in the processor market, thanks to its brilliant Ryzen processors, its GPU strategy has faceplanted into the ground in a liquorfuelled stupor. These cards are, frankly, not that interesting. Not even as far as a rebadge is concerned. Harsh? Absolutely not. Every new generational jump in GPU prowess has lead to one, maybe two, redesigned cards at the top end, with the older flagships then generally relegated down a step each time, usually with a slightly higher clock speed, and potentially some architectural tweaks to…

I’VE HAD A LITERAL STACK of laptops on my desk lately. I’m working on a large update to our online best gaming laptop buying guide, and that means calling in just about every portable gaming machine under the sun. But as the books piled up, and the benchmarks started running together, one thing in particular stood out: I’m incredibly impressed at how slim and trim gaming laptops have become. Time was that for a laptop to have any sort of respectable pixel-pushing power, it meant that it also required a chassis that looked more like a Harrier jet exhaust than a notebook. These powerhouses pushed the envelope in terms of what could be called portable, and “laptop” was almost certainly a misnomer—I don’t know anyone who would actually sit one…

you write, we respond > Liquid Longevity > Maglev Bonus > Bottleneck Tips Liquid Lifespan I am going to build an AM4 PC. I planned to use a closed loop pre-filled liquid cooling system, and was very interested in the Silent PC article in the April 2017 issue. Why did you use a liquid cooling system with a visible reservoir, that you had to fill? Am I making a mistake or overlooking something? I keep systems for five years or more. Is there an expected lifespan on liquid cooling tubing? –Charlie B REVIEWS EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: In regard to why we used an open loop, it comes down to surface area. For the everyday user, a closed loop AIO is perfect. It’s easy to install, comes with a hefty…

BUDGET Approximate Price: $591 UNTIL RYZEN 3 drops, we’re sticking with Intel for our budget offering. It still feels weird to say that. We saw memory creep ever higher this issue, so the budget build got a butchering. We swapped out the Pentium G4600 for a G4560, as it only loses out a touch on clock speed, and saves us a sweet $20. Next up for the chop was the 1060. We went for a slightly lower specced 1050 Ti from Gigabyte, saving $45. Although we have reservations about the 1050 Ti as an upgrade over last generation, it’s still a solid 1080p GPU. Again, we decided to swap out storage, dropping the 240GB SSD for a 120GB model, enough for the OS and critical apps, while swapping to a…