Table of contents for October 2021ober in Maximum PC

REMEMBER WHEN Microsoft said that Windows 10 was going to be the last version of Windows you’d ever need? Yeah, I remember that. Good times, September 30th, 2014. I was there, watching the announcement, just some nerdy little kid, without a job, fresh out of college. I was so excited, I’d tried Windows 8 and 8.1 Home for some years, and put up with the awful tiles and lack of a start menu, before converting the thing to Start8 and basically turning it into exactly the same as Windows 7, but 10 seemed exciting. I immediately went out and bought myself a version of Windows 8.1 Pro (with a student discount), and eagerly awaited the launch of the new operating system. And it came, and it was great. It fixed…

INTEGRATED CIRCUITS have been constructed on a silicon substrate since their inception (we even use the word silicon as a synonym for chips), but ARM has been working on using plastic as a substrate for about ten years. Simple electric circuits on flexible plastic are nothing new; paint a design in conductive ink, and you’re done. There’s one in every membrane keyboard and RFID sticker. Researchers at ARM and PragmatIC have managed to put a fully-functional SoC on a flexible plastic substrate. It is essentially a Cortex M0 microcontroller. The PlasticARM (great name) carries 128bytes of RAM, 456bytes of ROM, and a Cortex M0 core that supports 32-bit ARM microarchitecture. The plastic component is a polyimide, and the transistors are thin metal oxide. It’s made using a hybrid mix of…

There is, so the theory goes, a new state of matter, along with gas, liquid, solid, plasma, and so on. A time crystal is an object caught in a repetitive motion that does not lose energy, which not only sounds impossible but also breaks the second law of thermodynamics. Time crystal was first proposed in 2012, but now Google scientists claim to have used a quantum computer to demonstrate that it is possible. It’s also a convenient advert for Google’s quantum computer, called Sycamore, which is capable of making calculations that would take conventional computers millions of years. If this quantum computer has indeed helped prove the possibility of the time crystal, it has earned its development budget.…

So, to run Windows 11, Microsoft has declared that you’re going to need a processor that supports TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0, along with Secure Boot. Now, I won’t go into detail about what TPM is, or how it works, as we’ve covered that enough already. However, the short version is that this is usually used in more enterprise grade products and companies than with everyday users, and it deals with generating and storing cryptographic keys, it’s a crypto-processor effectively. The problem, however, is that Microsoft is demanding TPM 2.0 at a minimum to run Windows 11, despite it only being available on Intel 8th series processors and AMD Ryzen 2000 series chips and above. If you haven’t built a machine in the last three years or so, you won’t…

STRAIGHT OFF the bat, you can tell that this new OS has had a fairly hefty re-design, and hats off to Microsoft for this one. The new design is incredible, it takes away the sharper lines from Windows 10 and softens them down. It has a frosted glass effect with plenty of different themes and color palettes to choose from. This change creates an easy-on-the-eye UI. Although there were plenty of customization options in Windows 10, it still felt like it had a harsher contrast and felt too utilitarian at times. Windows 11 brings a lot more color to the interface without looking too playful. Even though most people will change these out regardless, the new wallpapers add a bit more pop to everyone’s first glance at the new OS,…

PCs AND GAMING go hand in hand—unless you are using a notebook and trying to run Cyberpunk 2077 at full settings at 4K, maybe. Anyway, millions upon millions of people game on their PCs daily and the gaming scene built up around PCs is fundamentally massive. Yes, console gaming has been around for ages too, but it has always suffered from hardware and software limitations. With PC gaming, the world is your oyster—customization is nearly endless, you can build a rig exactly how you like it and get it to perform and behave just the way you want (as long as you can get the parts you need). Microsoft has been bridging its gap between Xbox and Windows closer and closer over the past few years for better integration. The…

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Quantum computers are notoriously unable to deal with any kind of interference from outside their enclosed systems, often cooled to just above absolute zero for their quantum bits, or qubits, to operate properly. And by properly we mean in a way that makes no sense according to the rules by which we usually understand the universe. Instead of being limited to the binary digits of 1 or 0, quantum computers are able to reach a ‘superposition’ of both at the same time, thanks to the peculiar properties of the subatomic particles they’re built upon. The differences in voltage that maintain these states are tiny too, which means anything that can artificially raise or lower a voltage can upset the system. This is why they’re often kept so cold, so that heat…

YOU’LL NEED • Raspberry Pi 4 or Pi 400 (one unit per room) • 8GB (or larger) microSD card, U3 cards recommended. One per room • 3.5 mm audio cables • Amplified speakers or a receiver with 3.5mm/phono audio input • Power supplies for your Raspberry Pis • Optional: Smartphone or tablet MULTI-ROOM AUDIO SYSTEMS can cost a pretty penny, but who needs to buy an expensive set of wireless speakers when you can use some Raspberry Pis and any 3.5mm wired speakers to achieve the same effect? We’ll use our Pi 4s and speakers/receivers (with 3.5mm audio inputs) to play music from a streaming service perfectly in sync via Bluetooth from our phone, tablet, or computer. We’ll show you how to do this with a single speaker and Raspberry…

presents: PS5 DualSense Controller BACKGROUND While we were waiting for our PS5 to arrive, we got busy on the DualSense controller. There’s enough new stuff packed in to make this a meal on its own: MAJOR TECH SPECS Space-age adaptive triggers Top-of-the-line haptic system SIE CXD9006GG—likely a custom Sony chip doing all the work Dialog DA9087 PMIC Realtek ALC5524 audio codec Nuvoton NAU8225 3.0 W Class-D Audio Amplifier 5.7 Wh Li-ion Battery KEY FINDINGS • The new design is so sleek that there are zero visible screws. We aren’t fazed though—where there’s a seam, there’s a way! The black trim cover around the joysticks unclips with ease, revealing two screws near the tips of the handles. Two more screws are hidden under the L1 and R1 buttons, which come up…

YOU’LL NEED THIS A COPY OF MINI VMAC plus working system ROM and OS image. See the emulation section for further details. https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/download.html THE ORIGINAL MACINTOSH (or “Mac” for short) is an iconic machine that brought home desktops to the masses and established a line of computers that is still going today. Its compact form, cool styling, and elegant graphical interface immediately won the hearts of creative people worldwide, and would influence many desktops that followed. However, it’s now very difficult to find original Macs in good working order, and it’s even harder finding working Macintosh floppy disks. This leaves emulation as the only way most people can now experience these machines, which can be tricky in itself. So, after a brief history tour, let us guide you through the…

MICROSOFT HAS LAUNCHED Windows 365, a way of accessing a Windows PC on any internet-enabled device. It didn’t have a particularly smooth launch, as only a day after they began, free two-month trials were withdrawn, presumably because of unexpected demand. In a nutshell, what Windows 365 means is you rent a Windows 11 PC with a specified number of processor cores, plus RAM and storage, that lives on a server somewhere in Microsoft’s basement. You can then access it from your phone, tablet, Chromebook, smart refrigerator, or whatever can run the app required. That poses the question: do you really need a PC in your home any more? Gamers have already had a taste of this from Xbox Cloud Gaming and Google’s Stadia, which are hamstrung by the client’s internet…

IF SIZE MATTERS, what’s an extra inch worth? Clocking in at 28-inches, the new ASUS TUF Gaming VG28UQL1A is an inch larger than what has arguably become the 27-inch norm for 4K, 144Hz gaming monitors based on IPS panel technology. That extra inch makes sense, but it’s a worry, given that the non-gaming 28-inch 4K monitors we’ve seen, such as the Philips 288E2UAE and Acer B287K, have underwhelmed in terms of panel quality. Rather than just being a PC gaming panel, Asus has fitted the TUF Gaming VG28UQL1A with two HDMI 2.1 ports. The significance is mainly for console gaming, with both the Sony PS5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X supporting 4K@120Hz refresh rates, which require HDMI 2.1. Of course, for PC, DisplayPort 1.4 is currently the interface of choice,…

AS WELL AS MAKING a great range of PC peripherals, Corsair also prides itself on a solid lineup of gaming headsets across different budget levels. One of its most popular is the HS series and the latest addition to its arsenal, the HS80, takes a more premium approach to the rest of the bunch. So, is it a headset that should grab your attention? The high-end approach is noticeable straight out the box. More premium materials have been used, including machined aluminum and a soft-touch rubberized plastic on the headband and in the center of the earcups. The only parts of the headset that feel cheap are the cups—it would have been nice had they been made out of the same soft-touch rubber found in the centerpieces. But on the…

WEBCAMS HAVE BECOME an essential part of day-to-day life for millions of people over the past year or so, but many are now ditching their built-in cams for more premium peripherals. The Facecam is Elgato’s first webcam, so should people turn their attention towards this cam and add it to their setup? Considering the huge role it plays in streaming peripherals, it's odd that this is Elgato's first go at a physical webcam. Sure, the company released the EpocCam, which turns your phone into a webcam via an app, but it has now opened the door into webcam production. Hopefully, this camera can complete Elgato’s arsenal of streaming gear. Straight out the box, we have to say this is a chunky cam. This isn’t necessarily the worst thing as it…

BEFORE WE PIT THESE two rivals a gainst each other, let’s take a step back in time to where it all began. The year is 1987, Adobe has just released its first piece of software called Illustrator for the Apple Macintosh. It was, and still is, a vector art and design software that by today’s standards looks pretty darn basic. However, in the late 1980s, this piece of technology completely revolutionized the art of graphic design. Before computerized work, creating a piece of design was a massive task and extremely time-consuming. Everything had to be done manually, including rulers and french curls, and typography was created letter by letter. One page of set type may even take a day or two to complete. You think making a mistake on a…

BUDGET SO, THE TIME HAS FINALLY COME, we can upgrade our budget AMD’s CPU. We have opted for the Ryzen 3 1200 CPU and seeing it in stock on Amazon.com was a joy, to say the least. The Ryzen 3 3100 would have been way better, but at around $345, it’s more than double the price of the Ryzen 3 1200. At around $40 more than our previous CPU, we can now double our cores, but unfortunately, it won’t double our threads just yet. Hopefully, in time, the Ryzen 3 3100 will slip into the budget build and make this a great full package. Also in our AMD build, we hunted around and found some similarly-priced RAM sticks with a slight speed increase @ 3200MHz instead of @ 3000MHz. Crucial…

INTEL’S CHIP development might feel as if it has stalled a little compared with AMD’s blistering development cycle, but the blue team hasn’t been idle, and rumors about the forthcoming 12th generation Alder Lake chips have been coming thick and fast. After what seems like far too long, Intel will soon have something genuinely innovative. Alder Lake will be a hybrid processor, combining Golden Cove cores for performance, and Gracemont cores for efficiency, with up to eight of each. It will use an LGA1700 socket with DDR5, and PCIe 5.0 support, but the accompanying chipset is unlikely to feature PCIe 5.0. What you plug into your PCIe 5.0 bus is another matter, there won’t be any PCIe 5.0 SSD drives until later next year, and we’ve yet to see a…

TRIUMPHS ✓ 3D PRINTED BRIDGE A stainless steel footbridge, weighing 4.9 tons, across a canal in Amsterdam has been made using 3D printing. ✓ WESTERN DIGITAL BOOST Spinning discs are alive and well, with WD reporting sales were up by a third in the last quarter. ✓ TEN BUCK PC Some bright spark managed to get a $10 microcontroller (an Espressif Systems ESP32) to emulate an original 1981 IBM PC. TRAGEDIES ✗ HACKERS DUMP FIFA After failing to extort $28m from Electronic Arts, hackers who stole the FIFA 21 source code have dumped it online. ✗ ORIGINAL KINDLES DYING As 3G networks are shut down older Amazon Kindles are left with no connection. Amazon is offering new ones instead. ✗ REFORGED, NOT FINISHED Leaks show that Blizzard knew Warcraft 3:…

DDR5 slots aren’t compatible with DDR4 slots. We might see motherboards that support both DDR4 and DDR5, but you’ll have to choose between one or the other—you won’t be able to install both memory types at the same time. For this reason, I’ve avoided mixed DIMM slot motherboards in the past; I’d rather have four of one type of slot rather than two of each. DDR5 slots will maintain the same pin count as DDR4, 288-pin, but the pin layout will be different, and the slots are keyed with a notch so that you can’t put in the wrong type of memory. Voltages are also different, with DDR5 dropping to a standard 1.1V compared to 1.2V on DDR4. DDR5 reorganizes the memory chip layout too. DDR5 supports up to 32…

> M.2 cooling > Strange boot issue > 2FA backup Cooling M.2 drives I’ve spent several weeks seeking advice on this topic, but haven't found a spec for the recommended operating range for M.2 drives. All I’ve found are mixed messages suggesting they do need cooling and they don’t need cooling. Folks have asked the question because they were concerned after seeing high temperatures via monitoring software like Speedfan and CrystalDiskInfo. There’s also a question over whether to purchase cooling with a fan or without. My first attempt was to mistakenly purchase an EZDIY=FAB 5V ARGB M.2 Heatsink for my Gigabyte Z370 HD3 motherboard, which doesn't have a 5V location to plug it in. Instead, I’ve ordered a Sabrent M.2 2280 Heatsink that has no fan. One final question: do…

IT ALL SEEMED TOO GOOD to be true right? Well in fairness it is very good, and we should all be excited about its full release. However, the elephant in the room is a big one at that. You may want to get hold of Windows 11 but can you actually do that? The likelihood is that as of now, it’s not compatible at all. If your PC is over 3 years old, the odds are that it might not be compatible with Windows 11 and that is a worrying thought. Don’t however be too comfortable continuing with Windows 10 if you can’t upgrade as that now has an end-of-life date in October 2025. Even if you have a fairly new PC don’t be too relaxed as it still may…

EARTH, SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1859. Colors flash through the night sky above New England, gold miners in the Rocky Mountains are woken by the brightness of the Northern Lights, visible as far south as the Caribbean. Telegraph operators across the world receive electric shocks from their equipment, which continues to operate, despite being disconnected from the power supply. The Sun, August 31st, 1859. A complex system of magnetic field lines suddenly twists, releasing a large quantity of plasma into space. This takes 17 hours to cross the 93 million miles to the Earth, which is at just the right place in its orbit to be hit by what today we’d call a coronal mass ejection. The largest geomagnetic storm on record, the Carrington Event caused widespread electrical disruption and power blackouts…

WE LOVE THE Raspberry Pi here at Maximum PC. And so do our colleagues at tomshardware.com, home to Pi User’s Les Pounder. So with their help, we’ve selected the finest Pi projects for you to enjoy. From retro gaming to home security, or even artificially intelligent object classification, there’s something here to inspire everyone. The Raspberry Pi is the perfect device for learning Linux. Its official operating system is based on Debian Linux and there’s even a build of Ubuntu for it. The Pi 4 is powerful enough that it can happily replace your desktop, and small enough to hide behind your monitor. Then there’s the Pi Zero, which is perfect for budding Internet of Things enthusiasts. And now there’s the Pi 400, where the keyboard is the computer. Of…

YOU’LL NEED • Raspberry Pi 3, 4 or 400 • 8GB (or larger) microSD card • Raspberry Pi Camera or a USB webcam • Power supply for your Raspberry Pi • Smartphone for taking photos • Selection of Pis or other objects for classification WE’RE GOING TO TRAIN our Raspberry Pi to identify other Raspberry Pis (or other objects) with machine learning (ML). Why is this important? An example of an industrial application for this type of ML is identifying defects in circuit boards. As circuit boards exit the assembly line, a machine can be trained to identify a defective circuit board for troubleshooting by a human. Other neat applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence could include facial recognition and face mask identification. For these types of projects, you…

YOU’RE NOT GOING TO get rich mining Bitcoin on a Raspberry Pi. Even with dedicated ASIC mining hardware, it’s hard to compete with industrial operations in countries with subsidized electricity supplies. It’s the same for other cryptocurrencies too – see www.tomshardware.com/uk/how-to/mine-cryptocurrency-raspberry-p. Yet you can still use RaspiBlitz to turn your Pi into a full Bitcoin node and store your bitcoins locally—you’re essentially self-sovereign as you haven’t entrusted your keys to others and you aren’t relying on other nodes to supply information. To quote the RaspiBlitz manual: “Not your node, not your rules”. PUT SOME STORAGE IN PLACE Running a full node involves regularly syncing the Bitcoin blockchain, which at present is 350GB and growing, so you’ll need some large external storage—a 1TB or larger external SSD. Ideally, you want your…

Asus ZenWiFi XD6 DESPITE OUR RAPID progress as a species over the last 200 years, the global footprint for radio noise has dwindled in the past two decades. Radio waves are slowly becoming quieter, the very things that ushered us into the realm of unhindered communication all those years ago are now becoming more refined and more sophisticated. No longer are we churning out huge gobbets of information and throwing it deep into the dark abyss of space. No, the inevitable march of technology has brought ever more advanced forms of communication that have defined this era. As our computational devices grow more potent and we produce deeper and richer content, the need for more impressive forms of compression and greater bandwidth has become paramount. From 2.4 GHz to 5…

YOU’LL NEED THIS ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CC 2020 https://www.adobe.com IF YOU HAVE FOLLOWED ALONG with the first Illustrator tutorial in the previous issue, you should have picked up a few of the basics within the application and, hopefully, can work your way around it. Like we said before, if you are familiar with the Adobe ecosystem and have used other pieces of software other than Illustrator, don’t sweat too much as it should be fairly easy to pick up. These applications work hand in hand with one another and are pretty similar. One of the main uses for Illustrator is for graphic design, and one huge sector of that department is typography. I hope we haven’t lost you already, trust us, you can create some nice artwork using type, especially with…

YOU’LL NEED THIS 8GB USB 3.0 FLASH DRIVE Internet Connection. Another PC or Laptop THE PRODIGAL SON HAS ARRIVED, Windows 11 is here in all of its insider glory, complete with quirky new taskbar layout, updated start menu, and enough options-baked-into-options to make even the most enthusiastic PC nerd happy (seriously, this particular Editor-in-Chief is overjoyed with it all). That said, in the world of Windows you often get two camps of people—those who like to perpetually update their machines, never performing a clean reinstall no matter the bugs or issues, and those folk opposite to that. The ones who will happily flatten everything at the drop of a hat if it means a cleaner system. And let’s face it, with the myriad of problems that occurred moving from Windows…

NOT A DAY GOES BY where I don’t listen to music or use headphones in one way or another. Although this probably isn’t good for my hearing, audio quality is important to me and I’m always looking to get the best out of the kit that I’ve come across since working on Maximum PC. There are many ways to get the most out of your audio gear and one tech that’s been gaining much attention in recent times is spatial audio. Essentially, spatial audio is AI software that can create a 360° spatial sound field, making the experience more immersive. This added level of immersion is great for gaming, so when Embody’s Immersive division offered to let me test its Hive spatial audio gaming software, along with a pair of…

SOMETIMES STANDARDS take hold for no particularly good reason. For proof, look no further than PC monitors and the 16:9 aspect ratio. From a pure computing perspective, there’s isn’t much reason to favor 16:9 over numerous alternatives. But 16:9 is the standard for the HDTV market, so it dominates the desktop, too. The exception, of late, has been various flavors of ultrawide panels from 21:9 aspect right out to crazy 32:9 monitors. For productivity, however, ultrawide isn’t always super desirable. Enter the new Huawei MateView. It ditches all those wide and wonderful aspect ratios for a much squarer and taller 3:2 format. Derived from a standard 4K display, the MateView clocks in with 3,840 by 2,560 pixels. So, that’s an extra 400 vertical pixels compared with regular 4K. Squeezed into…

ACTION ROLE PLAYING THE INTRO TO BLADE RUNNER, but with way more shooting, seems to be the elevator pitch here, and it works extremely well. As an indentured laborer on the planet Veres, paying off the cost of your new life on the off-world colony with your body, you are at the bottom of the pile. Quite literally. They call it the Deepstink, and you’re sent down on a new-character-in-an-RPG mission to reset the computer that’s not clearing the sewage so your betters, who live higher up the arcology, aren't showering in manure. You need somewhere to ascend from, after all. LOCKDOWN MISSION It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous. This early mission is straightforward enough—you go in with your gun, blast a few ferals, hack a few…

> Folding@Home > Big Brother > Windows 11 Compatibility What PCs are all about I am a digital subscriber in the UK, and have enjoyed reading Maximum PC over the past few months. I am old enough to have experienced the joy when massive hard disks first became available—I refer to 40MB hard disks, of course. Not too long after that, I was responsible for buying a server running a version of Unix, that had two enormous hard disks, that would handle the company’s storage requirements pretty much forever. One of these was 500MB and the other was 1GB. And the 1GB disk cost more than my house. Tempus fugit, as they used to say back in Rome. I am confident that I w ill have 100TB of storage in…

NEW LAWS ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY have come into effect in California and five other States. The California Energy Commission Tier II implementation defines a mandatory energy consumption for desktop systems, depending on the PC’s memory, GPU, extra drives, and so on. Warnings appeared on Dell’s website under selected Alienware systems, saying they could no longer be shipped to six States. Closer inspection of the rules reveals they only apply to a PC when it idles, not under load, and the idea is to limit pointless power consumption, not performance. Despite having five years’ notice, some configurations of Alienware’s Aurora R10, and R12 systems managed to flunk the test, but as no other system builder had any problems, it seems our rigs are safe.…

Researchers looking into advert transparency, and the spread of misinformation on Facebook found themselves banned for a violation of its terms of service. The group was examining the spread of political adverts on Facebook and had developed a browser plug-in to collect data on which ads are shown and to whom. This is a hot topic of course, as Facebook’s political adverts aren’t fact-checked. The company makes some data available, but not how the ads are targeted. One researcher said, “Facebook is silencing us because our work often calls attention to problems”. However, Facebook has had its fingers burned by third parties data scraping before.…

DEATHLOOP Break free from a time loop while being hunted down in Arkane Studios’ action-shooter. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2-HEART OF CHERNOBYL Intense survival sequel will keep you on your toes. SABLE Glide across stunning deserts and plains, exploring ancient ruins in a beautiful open world. TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III Four years on, a third (and final?) iteration to look forward to! HALO INFINITE Infinite’s fastpaced FPS gameplay will have you hooked (yes, that’s a pun; there’s a grappling hook now). FAR CRY 6 The franchise now takes us to Yara to engage in some modern high-octane guerrilla warfare. FORZA HORIZON 5 Fun, without being OTT, racing in an open-world Mexican landscape? We’re in! BATTLEFIELD 2042 An epic shooter set in a crisis environment caused by natural disasters.…

GENERALLY SPEAKING, there are two things that an update can bring to the table. One of which is an element of fear and the other, an element of excitement. We fear that features we have grown to love and use every day may vanish (we haven’t forgotten about you Clippy). We also fear that too much change will interrupt the ease of use we have built up by using a certain OS for years on end. This fear of the unknown can make you hesitant about updating. Certain parts of an operating system make you fall in love with it, especially if it helps day-to-day life, whether that is work or just domestic social use. Also, new bugs can be introduced and it may take a while for everything to…

WHEN YOU ACTUALLY EXAMINE how industry standards for connectivity and hardware performance evolve over time, it’s surprising how quickly the new normal gets adopted by the masses. USB-A was the dominant form of physical port connectivity across the hardware spectrum for years, but mobile devices ran through a flurry of alternate compact ports before settling on the USB-C connector we know and love. It’s strange to think that in a few short years, the top-tier hardware we feature here in 2021’s issues of Maximum PC will be heavily outdated, even obsolete. The industry moves fast. When a new gold standard for any aspect of our systems arrives, it doesn’t take long before every new product conforms to the norm. PCIe 4.0 SSDs were hailed as a revolution when they first…

“At the moment we have telescopes looking at the Sun,” says Desai, “they see stuff happening on the Sun’s surface, and as soon as a CME occurs we can start running our models to predict what time the CME will arrive, and when it does, what will its properties be—how big is its magnetic field, and how much plasma is contained inside of it. Typically, CMEs can take between three and five days to reach us, but a severe one could reach us sooner.” Indeed, NASA figures put the shortest time for a CME to cross the 93 million miles between us and the Sun as 15 hours, for a mindboggling speed of over six million miles per hour. Desai’s team has discovered that, if CMEs come at us in pairs, then…

TIP OF THE MONTH HOW LONG TO BEAT If you love video games and planning ahead then this might just make your day. How Long To Beat (https://howlongtobeat.com) is a website that gives you average completion times for a vast library of games on both the PC and game consoles past and present. It’s a great place to head to before diving straight into a game, so you know whether you can fit it into your schedule or need to book a whole month off work to complete it. MAKE – USE – CREATE 58 How to create 3D typography in Adobe Illustrator 64 Our step-by-step guide to installing Windows 11 fresh 66 Building high-end ITX art with a G.Skill Z5i chassis OS EXCITEMENT Let’s set things straight here, regardless…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM THE CONCEPT IT’S FAIR TO SAY that when we first set eyes upon the G.Skill Z5i in its glorious review photoshoot, we were impressed. Even the photographer turned around to us and said: “I’ve shot a lot of big old PC boxes for you guys, but this thing is nice”. And we have to agree with that sentiment. On first appearance, the Z5i is an exceptionally beautiful chassis, complete with an aluminum frame, curved tempered glass panels and baked in RGB lighting, including a neat little underglow that makes us think back to the glory days (if you can call them that) right at the start of the Fast and Furious franchise. And it got us thinking about what exactly to…

THE NEW ZEPHYRUS S17 is a beast of a gaming laptop with an interesting USP; a keyboard that tilts up toward the user. At first glance, it’s a minor alteration to make typing more comfortable. But while this isn’t an inaccurate assessment—the gentle angling of the keys and space to rest your wrists beneath the keyboard make for a pleasant experience—there’s more to it than that. That keyboard lifts away from the chassis to uncover additional vents, allowing the S17 to draw in cool air from the top and bottom of its casing, before expelling it through the rear and sides. A liquid metal cooling compound inside the laptop, combined with two impressively quiet fans, results in a laptop with stellar thermal performance, even with the most demanding games. We…

THE G.SKILL Z5I is one of the best-looking cases we’ve seen in the last year or so. It would be easy for case manufacturers to fall back on those old tired design tropes, and make something generic. Those ageold cuboid utilitarian shapes are certainly efficient, but it’s hardly going to lead to a standout piece of art when it comes to thinking about a home for your next rig. But the G.Skill Z5i is something else entirely. Its hinged curved tempered glass panels allude to the interior with subtlety and grace. The front I/O is a smooth sheet of brushed aluminum, bound into the rest of the aluminum frame, and littered with triangular perforations that run around and through the heart of the case itself, ensuring that airflow is plentiful.…

ASUS’S ROG GLADIUS gaming mice have been kicking about for over half a decade now, with each subsequent iteration improving slightly—and only slightly—on the previous model. Unsurprisingly, this is still the case here, with the Gladius III Wireless removing the power cable but ultimately doing little to differentiate itself from the standard Gladius III. Is that such a bad thing? This is still a well-made device that ticks all the standard boxes for a gaming mouse. It features three-zone RGB lighting (customizable via the Armory Crate software, or the lighting profile button on the underside) along with a sturdy construction and swappable Omron switches for the two main clicker buttons thanks to Asus’s push-socket design. This allows you to switch over to quieter switches, or merely extend the mouse’s lifespan…