Table of contents for March 2016 in Maximum PC

Unless you live under a rock, you’ll have noticed the rise of the gamer’s gem of technological advancement, the Oculus Rift—and, more importantly, the rebirth of virtual reality. Couple that with Microsoft’s advances in augmented reality, and the next decade may see monitors begin to change irrevocably. We sat down for a chat with Oculus VR’s founder about his thoughts on the future of Oculus Rift, VR, and virtual media as a whole. Maximum PC: We’re here with Oculus VR’s founder, Palmer Luckey. Palmer, we have some questions for you, if you don’t mind. Palmer Luckey: Fire away! MPC: For those who haven’t been following the VR scene, what is the status of VR right now, and what do you expect to happen in the next year? PL: Right now,…

THE MOST OBVIOUS and easiest to understand memory specification is capacity. The more you have, the more use you can make of it. Or at least, that’s the theory. In reality, it’s entirely dependent on what you're doing and the programs you use. For instance, if you only intend to play games, 32GB of RAM is excessive. So let’s go through a quick rundown of what capacity we recommend. Note that these figures are for general desktop work and play—there are plenty of special-use cases that have their own memory hogs, and many instances when you can get away with much less. 8GB We now see this as the bare minimum for your average PC. If you want to build a solid gaming system, 8GB is plenty for pretty much…

NOW WE COME TO the pinnacle of what Corsair can provide—it’s in the interesting offering of these 3,200MT/s Vengeance LPXs that we find the current peak of consumer DDR4 technology. Complete with included air-cooler and crazy XMP settings, this memory kit throws the JEDEC standards out of the window, ramping up the overall voltage to 1.35V, and the memory transfer rate all the way from 2,133 to 3,200MT/s. Although it’s not as simple as that…. To pass the 2,800MT/s mark, memory manufacturers have to tinker with the BCLK. In the Z170 chipset, this isn’t a big deal, as the memory BCLK is separate from the CPU. However, this is a quadchannel kit, designed to work with the X99 platform, which doesn’t have such a robust and dynamic memory controller. The…

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE COLOR-MATCHING your build perfectly. Having all of your components correctly correlate in a windowed chassis just feels right—it feels good. After all, when you’re choosing your memory kit, there’s often not a great deal between them, as you can tell from this group test. More often than not, it’s what’s affordable, available, and looks best in your build that matters. And this is a market that Crucial is tapping into with these fantastically white Ballistix Sport LT DIMMs. However, beyond aesthetics, there’s not a lot here that differentiates them from Crucial’s other "sporty" offerings. They’re still rated at 2,400MT/s, and they’re still available up to 16GB-worth of DDR4 capacity. Other downsides? Well, you’re back to dual-channel, and you still keep that sadly sluggish CAS latency of 16ns,…

WE’VE ESTABLISHED that the 2x 8GB kit (previous page) is pretty good value for money. And although the benchmarks don’t stack up particularly well in comparison to some of the more powerful offerings, they’re more than ideal for any gaming rig. So how does the quad-channel kit compare? Well, you still get that same 2,400MT/s, you still get the CAS latency of 15, and you still get the same capacity as the 2x 8GB. The only difference is the increase from dual-to quad-channel. Ultimately, however, you don’t gain a lot in regard to performance. There’s the additional bandwidth. But that doesn’t translate to any real-world benefit in our testing, with most, if not all, of our benchmarks being within 1 percent of their 2x 8GB twins. One thing that constitutes…

MEMORY IS ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT components to benchmark with a view to truly useful analysis. The problem is that, for the vast majority of specs, increased frequencies and lower CAS latencies don’t affect gaming in any significant way. We know that not everyone here is a gamer, but the fact is that the vast majority of the PC enthusiast audience plays games first and foremost, as opposed to anything else. Across our entire suite of benchmarks, over 10 separate memory kits, ranging from 8GB all the way up to 32GB, from 2,133MHz to 3,200MHz, from dual-channel to quad-channel, our Shadow of Mordor benchmark did not change whatsoever, hitting an average of 27fps each and every time we ran it. And even if you’re more interested in the creative…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY Pi 2 The brilliant mini-computer costs under $45. See www.raspberrypi.org. RETROPIE This purpose-built distro makes it easy to play retro games. Video games in the ’80s were quite different from the latest crop of frag-’em-till-you’re-dead pointand-shoot games. They were tastefully crafted, 8-bit graphical masterpieces, with an intense storyline, and gameplay that kept you engrossed for hours. If reading this makes you feel nostalgic, you’re in luck, because you can emulate the golden era of gaming consoles on your modern hardware and escape back to the 1980s. The new quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 has enough number-crunching power to recreate the video game consoles of yesteryear virtually. Most of the software that creates the defunct platforms is available as open-source software, which you can install on top of…

WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FORWARD to Valve’s Steam Machine initiative for a long time, mostly because Valve has never failed us in the past. Well, there’s a first time for everything, and we have to acknowledge that the company has made a misstep here. At the frontlines of the initiative is Alienware’s little 2.1x7.8x7.8-inch box. If the system looks familiar, it’s because it’s largely the same small PC as Alienware’s Alpha system we’ve reviewed before. It’s still super sexy, portable, and has the same ports. The biggest difference is that the Steam Machine version uses Linux (with Steam’s Big Picture Mode overlay on top) instead of Windows. Also, instead of coming with an Xbox controller, the Steam Machine comes with Valve’s new Steam Controller, which has a steep learning curve, but…

LET’S CUT TO THE POINT. Piecing together a small form factor build is always going to be a nightmare. If you’ve had any experience working in those tiny, cramped spaces, you’ll know that getting every inch of extra leverage is vital. Couple that with an incredibly limited number of potential cooling options, and you’re well on the way to shredded fingers, busted egos, and general frustration when trying to beef up and perfect your small slice of ITX heaven. Let’s give you a hypothetical scenario to add a little clarity to the situation. You’re a well-rounded teenager, and you’ve been saving up for a year now to build your very own ITX chassis ready for university. You don’t know exactly how much space you’re going to have, and being a…

Yes we all know that loading screens are super annoying, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Check out our online story, in which we delve into the technical side of what your CPU and storage are doing before and between your frag sessions. We test a wide variety of games and applications, and provide charts and graphs with our analysis. Next time you’re twiddling your thumbs waiting for a game to load, you’ll have a better idea of what’s going on. http://bit.ly/MPC_loading…

the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are small “Isn’t throttling prohibited by the FCC? This is where things get tricky. AS ANY PARENT knows, children make it their mission to test the rules to see exactly how much (or little) they can get away with, as the line drawn in the sand can sometimes be moved just a smidge. The Federal Communication Commission finds itself in a similar position after laying down the net neutrality law with its Open Internet Order, a set of rules designed to ensure that all data on the Internet is treated equally. As expected, service providers have begun testing the limits of the FCC’s rules. T-Mobile is leading the charge with its Binge On program. Binge On is one of a growing number…

SINCE THEIR INTRODUCTION to the world stage, Corsair’s Dominator Platinums have been more than mere memory. They are the pinnacle of artistic design and double data rate applied sciences. A symbol of the elite when it comes to computational superpower. This is mostly due to the phenomenal price tag that’s often associated with these sticks of DDR3/4. Today, however, that’s not the case, and although they’re not the cheapest option here, they’re far from the most expensive. So for $300 you net yourself 32GB (or 4x 8GB) of the sleekest, most dependable, quad-channel memory out there. With a CAS latency of just 14, and a data rate peaking at 2,400MT/s these DDR4 sticks dominate the performance side of things, at least when it comes to 7-Zip’s archival benchmarking test. This…

CAN YOU GUESS WHY Crucial is already on the right foot with us? It’s for one reason and one reason alone: it isn't trying to impress us with any obscure MHz ratings. Thanks, Crucial, for being the honest Joe in the memory milieu. The Ballistix Elites have been around for quite some time. Many of you will remember the early days of the super-huge heatspreaders that were found in the DDR3 variants. Well, those times are long past and—hot damn—look at these little beauties! The Crucial Ballistix Elites are some of the sexiest, sleekest and downright slinkiest all-black RAM modules out there. With a powder coat finish, they look perfect in almost any build. And as for performance? Well, that’s another matter. Short of Corsair’s “3,200MHz” monsters, and Kingston’s soul-destroying…

AHH—AT LAST we get to the absolute kings of speed. If you've already read about the Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200s, no doubt you’ll understand the problems associated with breaking that 2,800MT/s threshold. It’s difficult if you’re not adjusting the BCLK to any great degree. Fortunately, Kingston’s BCLK adjustments are far less severe than their Corsair counterparts, and we managed to overclock our Intel Core i7-5820K back up to its standard stock frequencies, with very minimal changes to the overall VCore or other settings nestled deep within the UEFI BIOS. And with that we saw some awfully impressive numbers. With a CAS latency of 15, the real-world latency of these Savages drops to 10ns, on a par with Corsair’s 3200 kit. And coupled with that stock CPU overclock, it’s by far…

PNY’S ANARCHY X kits are some of the more interesting DDR4 kits we’ve had the opportunity to test for this roundup. They fit snugly at the high end of the overclocking spectrum, without having to alter the BCLK to any vast degree. This means we can get some phenomenal benchmarks with the X99 platform, without necessarily having to re-overclock our CPU to stock again. In fact, we can increase the overall performance in our system with a fairly conservative overclock to the CPU on top of that as well. And it's a noticeable difference with a stock CPU, with the highest PCMark 8 Creative score, and some solid archiving performance in both WinRAR and 7-Zip. These sticks fit right into the sweet spot— they’re not the slowest, nor the fastest…

WINDOWS 10 certainly blends the best features of Windows 7 and 8.1, but there are still hurdles to overcome if you truly want to enjoy it. In this feature, we round up the most frustrating annoyances you’re likely to come across with your new operating system, and show you how to get the OS to work the way you want it to once again. You’ll discover how to restore features taken out of Windows 10, such as Windows Media Center, make sure settings are correctly applied to protect your privacy and security, plus resolve other issues with the minimum of fuss. Once you’ve worked your way through our list, you’ll have a PC that’s working for you, not the other way round. Without further ado, then, it’s time to get…

REPLACE ITUNES WITH AN APP THAT WORKS Loathe iTunes? Dislike its enormous install size, cumbersome Windows experience, and limited customization? Don’t worry—we’ve scoured the Internet for the perfect solution. Enter MusicBee, a beautiful piece of open-source freeware developed by the community and founded by Steven Mayall. At only 15MB, it’s fully customizable, easy to configure, and comes with a phenomenal range of plugins. www.getmusicbee.com CPU QUERIES I want to talk to you about processors. It’s something of a sticky subject for me. I love overclocking, I love CPUs, and I love watching those benchmark figures climb higher. Hell, even seeing those 12 little squares rendering that bland image in Cinebench R15 makes me happy. So what’s the problem at the moment, then? Well, I’m currently planning my next build. Just…

1. CONFIGURE SCUMMVM Start the launcher and click on “Options.” Switch to the last tab, which houses miscellaneous settings. Use the “Theme” button to change the visual appearance of the launcher. The “GUI Renderer” setting defines how the launcher is rendered, and the “Autosave” option controls the length of time that ScummVM waits between saves. 2. DEFAULT PATHS Switch to the “Paths” tab to configure where ScummVM looks for particular files. The “Save Path” option points to the default folder where ScummVM stores saved games. If the option isn’t set, saved games are stored in the current directory. Then there’s “Theme Path,” which points to the directory that stores additional themes for the launcher. 3. ADD GAMES To load a supported game into ScummVM, copy its data files from the…

YOU’LL NEED THIS PHOTOSHOP CC Subscribe to various Adobe packages at www.abobe.com. THE SELFIE IS AN APT ICON FOR OUR NARCISSISTIC AGE. Being able to stare into the limpid pools of your own eyes is one thing, but taking such a picture without the assistance of someone else elevates it to new levels of self-love. Other people are only needed when you share your picture online, and they press a “Like” button, or post an adoring comment. But how to get more adoration while gazing into the reflective surface of the Internet? You can start by retouching your skin, because no matter how much you moisturize, there will still be some imperfections. Happily, Photoshop can sweep them all away—but it’s important not to go too far and end up with…

BUILDING THIS LITTLE RIG was a blast, and went by much faster than other small form factor builds we’ve worked on. Installing the SteamOS is easy as well, as long as you look out for a couple of things. First of all, you need to set the Secure Boot option to “Other OS” in the BIOS. SteamOS and most other Linux distributions aren’t able to supply certificates to motherboard vendors. Without a signed certificate, the BIOS will refuse to boot the OS unless you disable Secure Boot. When we tried the automatic installation for SteamOS, the installer couldn’t partition the SSD, for whatever reason. When we tried the “advanced” installation (it really isn’t that advanced, as Linux installations go), everything worked just fine. There’s a dark side to playing games…

WHETHER YOU’RE AFTER a multi-colored, über-ergonomic trigger stomper, or just a simple minimalistic mouse, finding the right one is always a challenge. The problem lies in the shape and form of your hand. Whether you’re a palm, claw, or fingertip user, each one has different requirements, and each is usually associated with smaller or larger hands. Which means that every mouse is designed to take advantage of these styles. Take the Xornet II by Cooler Master, for example. It’s ridiculously tiny—it may as well be designed for Ewoks—but that doesn’t stop it being a good mouse for those select few. Corsair, on the other hand, has always managed to impress us with the accommodating nature of its mice. Time after time, it's produced precision pointers that cater to a wider…

TRIUMPHS DADDY BIG BUCKS In a letter to his newborn daughter, Mark Zuckerberg pledged to donate 99 percent of his Facebook shares to charitable causes during his lifetime. OPENING LOCKED DOORS Due to an architecture change, mobo makers released BIOS updates for Z170 mobos enabling users to overclock non-K Skylake CPUs. BETTER BROADBAND The latest version of an ongoing FCC study reveals US average broadband speeds tripled in three years. TRAGEDIES PLAYING THE BLAME GAME A Russian gamer who neglected his wife, job, and friends in favor of Fallout 4 ended up suing Bethesda for making an addictive game. WHERE’S DOOR NUMBER 3? Microsoft splashed PCs with popups imploring users to upgrade to Win 10 with two options: “Upgrade now” or “Upgrade tonight.” SORRY, NOT SORRY Microsoft apologized for tightening…

LET’S FACE IT, MEMORY isn’t the sexiest component in your computer. It’s not a beautiful polygon-rendering graphics card from the metallurgic factories of AMD or Nvidia. It’s not a gigahertz-crunching, hairtingling, multithreaded CPU. Nor is it a speed-freak of a PCIe SSD solution—M.2 or otherwise. It’s memory. RAM. And if we're honest, while it’s without doubt one of the most important cornerstones currently fixed within every PC system on the planet, it’s simply not that exciting, nor particularly easy to understand—beyond the concept of capacity, of course. That said, the questions we are asked here in the Maximum PC office most often tend to revolve around that volatile yet thought-provoking component. “How much RAM do I need?” and “What’s the best upgrade for me?” Well, that’s what we’re here to…

ANY STICK OF RAM can operate at a number of frequencies and latencies, depending on the platform you use it on. Which settings it uses is defined in your UEFI/BIOS configuration utility, although in order to get your system up and running, your motherboard should default to the settings defined by a small chip on the RAM, called the serial presence detect (SPD for short). These settings adhere to the JEDEC standard, and don't necessarily set your memory as fast as it can go, although they should ensure that it boots fine. JEDEC defines the standards for memory performance, and ensures that there’s common ground for RAM manufacturers and motherboard makers to adhere to. The problem is, JEDEC errs on the safe side a little too much for the more…

CORSAIR’S VENGEANCE LP series has always been designed around one simple concept: fitting into places where other DIMMs fear to tread. They achieve this admirably, capable of fitting under even the meatiest of air-cooling supertowers or low-profile ITX coolers. This helps to create a trouble-free HTPC build experience. With the launch of Skylake and Haswell-E, Corsair introduced the LPX series. The "X" denotes the jump to DDR4. To date, these have been Corsair’s finest DDR4 sticks, most notably because they’re not held back by the huge price barrier of the Platinums. Although they pale in the shadow of the Dominators' glory, these particular dual-channel memory kits still maintain a sleek and sexy feel, hidden out of sight and out of mind. With an allblack aluminum heatsink, and black PCB, you…

CRUCIAL’S BALLISTIX SPORT quad-channel set was actually one of the first kits we got in for the new DDR4 memory standard. It certainly provided us with a convenient testbed for benchmarking many a new processor and graphics card. And as far as value for money goes, it’s easily the best in this group test, costing just $6.56 per gigabyte. Despite the rather generic design style on the heatsinks, the black PCB makes this particular set of DDR4 ideal for liquid cooling. Even if you don’t want to ride those watery waves to lower-temperature heaven, well, the black PCB at least adds a modicum of moodiness. As for performance, try this for intrigue. This quad-channel kit pulls pretty much the same power from the wall as the Ballistix Elites, a dual-channel…

PATRIOT HAS PROVIDED some fantastic memory kits over the last few years. Certainly, the Patriot Viper Blacks were some of the crispest low-profile DDR3 kits we’d ever laid eyes on. So with the launch of DDR4, we only expected good things from the Californian memory manufacturer. And here we have it: Patriot’s new line of Viper Reds coming in at a snug 2,400MT/s, and a CAS latency of 15. Although they are not the fastest memory out there (in fact, they’re the slowest in our group test), they do provide dependability and good value for money. In fact, they're a solid $7.50 per gigabyte. As far as performance goes, however, they’re pretty much where you’d expect a standard DDR4 kit to be. Their overall bandwidth is the lowest out of…

When it comes to memory testing, finding the right setup is crucial. After all, there’s no point testing quad-channel kits on a Skylake platform. For this we cracked out a few old favorites: Intel’s Core i7-5820K, ASRock’s X99M Extreme4, and one GeForce GTX 980, all running on Windows 10, installed on Samsung’s 512GB 950 Pro SSD. On top of that, we wanted to prove once and for all that as long as you have 8GB, memory frequency, latency, and channels don’t matter for gaming, so Shadow of Mordor was top of the testing list. Couple that with Cinebench for rendering performance, WinRAR and 7-Zip for archiving performance, and PCMark 8 for creative overall analysis, and we were good to go.…

OK, WE ALL KNOW that SteamOS has been a colossal failure so far. Unsurprisingly, Linux simply cannot compete with Windows when it comes to the fiery crucible that is frame rendering combat. However, that shouldn’t put you off small-form-factor living-room gaming. No, sir, not by a long shot. Fortunately, Valve did innovate in one vital area: Big Picture Mode. Couple that with a capable mini PC from Zotac, and we’re on to a winner. The true beauty of Zotac’s Magnus resides at its heart. Beating silently and confidently for all of your computational needs is a beautifully power-efficient Intel Core i5-5200U. And what’s the perfect match for that? Well, how about a full-fledged Nvidia GeForce GTX 960? Couple that with up to 16GB of DDR3, one M.2 SSD, and two…

About iFixit iFixit is a global community of tinkerers dedicated to helping people fix things through free online repair manuals and teardowns. iFixit believes that everyone has the right to maintain and repair their own products. To learn more, visit www.ifixit.com. XIFIXIT PRESENTS: BACKGROUND: Every once in a while, cloud software giant Valve tries its hand at hardware—see the Steam Machine. This time, it’s promised to revolutionize the way we game with its Steam Controller. The company has impressed us with highly modular tech in the past, so let’s find out how much game this controller has. MAJOR TECH SPECS: • High-definition haptic feedback • Dual trackpads • USB 2.0 via micro-USB port • Six-axis combination gyroscope-accelerometer sensor • Dual-stage digital triggers with 10° of travel, magnetic flux sensor, and…

1. NETWORK TRANSFERS If RetroPie is connected to your router, you can transfer game ROMs to it from any computer on the same network. The distro ships with a pre-configured Samba server, and shows up as a Windows share. Copy the ROMs inside the directory for their particular emulator. 2. VIA USB The easiest way to transfer ROMs is to use a USB flash drive. When it detects a USB disk, RetroPie creates a directory structure for ROM files that mirrors the emulators installed on the distro. Wait a while as it creates the directories and then remove the drive. 3. PLUG AND PLAY Now put that USB stick into your desktop PC, and copy the ROMs on to it, making sure to put them in the right folder. When…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 10 There are solutions for other versions of Windows. WHEN YOU’RE A PC, everything is out to get you. You need to learn how to shut the door on malicious software, and clean it out if it does take hold. We already know that you don’t browse movie streaming sites, frequent dating services populated by young ladies from the former Soviet Union who occasionally use stock photos as profile pictures, or merrily execute every.exe attachment you discover in your email spam folder—but even though you’re a paragon of online virtue, there are still things you can do to protect your PC. As a responsible Windows 10 user, you’re probably already doing them. You chose “Express Settings” at install or flicked the button marked “Help protect your…

Photoshop’s Blend Modes determine how the colors and brightness of a layer mix with those of the layer below. If a layer is set to “Normal Blend Mode” and 100 percent opacity, nothing from layers below passes through. Lower the opacity, however, and something of what’s underneath starts to appear. “Multiply” mode multiplies the RGB values for each pixel with those below, resulting in a darker picture, while “Screen” does the same with the layers inverted, leading to a lighter result. The various “Light” modes and “Overlay” combine the two, performing mathematical transformations to determine the final color and brightness of each pixel. The “Dodge” and “Burn” modes lighten and darken images respectively, and are named for darkroom techniques.…

YOU CAN ALMOST picture the scene: the Dark Lords of Technology showing off their wares, urging Asus to join the forces of Maxwell and Skylake to rule the mobile gaming universe. Unlike in the movies, though, Asus takes the bait and delivers its updated G752VT notebook. Unfortunately, while impressive on many levels, you still have to watch out for that exhaust port weakness (which Asus oddly tries to cover with a couple of rubber grommets). Asus routinely offers true gaming notebooks—and by “true” we mean they go with the fastest graphics cards available, not lower-tier parts with names that belie their performance (we’re looking at you, GTX 950M/960M). Having been a player in this arena for so long, you’d expect the well-oiled Asus machinery to crank out improvements every year.…

FUN IS A FUNNY THING. Videogames should be fun, so to approach them expecting to be entertained is perfectly reasonable. Just Cause 3 knows this, and the first thing you do is surf a plane while shooting stuff with a rocket launcher. Actually, no. The first thing you do is wait while protagonist Rico sits on a beach doing nothing—presumably it’s a loading screen—then wait until the game logs in to Square Enix’s servers, then sit through another more explicit loading screen (one minute 23 seconds in total for us; happily, in-game restarts and checkpoints are quicker). Only then, accompanied by a lounge version of the Prodigy’s Firestarter, do the explosions begin. And when it does get going, Just Cause 3 is a blast. Returning home to the Mediterranean island…