Table of contents for February 2016 in Maximum PC

THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES... Getting Old Greetings from Connecticut! First: awesome job with the magazine. You strike the right balance between reviews, news, and hands-on stuff. I own a Seagate NAS 220, and received an email telling me that there’s an impending certificate upgrade, which will result in me losing remote access to the unit. I don’t understand—I bought the NAS 220 specifically for this feature. It’s out of warranty now (it’s about five years old), so I expect the cold shoulder from Seagate. Besides buying a different NAS, going through the cloud (Dropbox, Google, and so on), or enabling FTP on my 220, what can I do to remotely access files on my NAS? –Liviu Oncioiu THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: It sounds like your best bet for remote access…

THE ORIGINAL XBOX ONE CONTROLLER is the benchmark for PC gamepads. It’s beautifully made, ergonomically pleasing, and brilliantly supported by PC gaming in general. Sony’s DualShock 4 is the closest rival, sporting slicker analog sticks but weaker trigger buttons, and is far less supported on our favorite machine—although there are ways of getting it up and gaming if you’re prepared to put in the time. Microsoft wants to kick the DS4 into third place, though, and has released its super-expensive Elite Controller, building on all that is good about the standard gamepad, and taking it even further. The problem, however, is that while it is undoubtedly an excellent pad, Microsoft hasn’t made enough of them. Take a look at Amazon, and you’ll see that even the behemoth online store is…

THIS MONTH WE DISSECT. 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. BACKGROUND: We’ve got the Surface Book, a laptop to replace the tablet that replaced your laptop. It’s the first ever notebook from Microsoft, and with its detachable display and pressuresensitive Surface Pen, it defies categorization—but not teardownification. Join us as we dismantle the Surface Book! MAJOR TECH SPECS: • 13.5-inch PixelSense multitouch display, with 3000x2000 resolution (267ppi) • Sixth-gen Intel Core i5 with dedicated Nvidia GPU • 8GB RAM • 128GB solid-state drive • 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 • 8MP rear camera with 1080p…

YOU’LL NEED THIS CAMERA A DLSR is ideal, but any digital camera should do. PHOTOSHOP, GIMP, PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS Any layer-based image editor— we use Photoshop here. YOU’RE OUT FOR A HIKE in one of our wonderful national parks, indulging in your second favorite hobby: bird spotting. You’ve got a DSLR with a long lens to capture any cardinals or blue jays you see flitting through the trees, but left the wider ones in your truck to cut down on weight. Suddenly, you stumble across a beautiful vista. Struck breathless by its beauty, you raise your camera to your eye, only to find that your telephoto lens can only capture a small sliver of its majesty. What do you do? You use your PC to help. The latest high-end PCs have…

CAST YOUR MIND BACK to September 10, 2014. AMD had just released its first GCN1.2 graphics chip, codenamed Tonga. Launched as the R9 285, generally available with 2GB GDDR5, but later with 4GB, Tonga contained new architectural enhancements, chief of which was the use of lossless delta color compression. This allowed AMD to cut the memory bus down from 384-bit to 256-bit without impacting performance too much, along with several other tweaks and optimizations The net result of these changes was a less expensive graphics card to manufacture compared to its predecessor (Tahiti), and it offered similar overall performance. The catch with the earlier launch of Tonga in the form of the R9 285 was that it featured the same 1,792 graphics cores as R9 280 (aka HD 7950), with…

THE PC IS NO STRANGER to high-end gaming peripherals. We’ve got super-fancy RGB mechanical keyboards that sport a wide array of switch types, and we have luminescent gaming mice with crazy DPI options. There is also a multitude of highend gaming controllers, including Valve’s recently released Steam Controller, which offer a ton of customization options. Not to be outdone, Microsoft has now unleashed its own beast: the Xbox Elite controller. What makes the controller “elite”? Well, first off, at $150, perhaps only the elite will be able to afford it. That said, it really does look and feel super-premium, and offers more than enough customization options. The first thing you’ll notice about the controller is its looks, which are damned sexy. Its bold black-and-silver design is a thing of beauty.…

THERE ARE NASES, then there are über-NASes. The QNAP TVS-EC1080+ is one such über-NAS. Pitched as an enterpriselevel unit, the TVS-EC1080+ packs killer hardware features as well as a host of applications that users should find handy. So, what does a $3,300 NAS get you? QNAP spares no expense, tossing in a 3.4GHz quad-core Xeon processor, 32GB RAM, dual 128GB SSD caching, and 10 full open bays. Make no mistake, this beast can do much more than store your family photos. Small to medium-sized offices would find the TVS-EC1080+ useful, especially with its large capacity and integrated 10GbE support. The primary function overall for this unit is to serve files or databases, and serve them fast. a business environment, most of the software features won’t be used. Photo backup, photo…

the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are small “Save for sites that sit behind a paywall, ads are why most content on the web is free FOR YEARS, digital publishers have relied on online advertising to sustain their existence. Save for sites that sit behind a paywall and charge subscription fees, ads are the reason why the vast majority of content on the web is free. It’s a business model that’s worked to this point, but with the recent rise in the use of ad-blockers, publishers and readers are suddenly at odds with one another. Part of the problem is that many site owners treat ad-blockers as a taboo subject, as though acknowledging their existence will make things worse. Others bring attention to the issue, but in negative…

1 STEAM CONTROLLER Valve’s controller is the wildest of the bunch, pushing customizability, backward compatibility, and precision accuracy. 2 XBOX 360 CONTROLLER Coming in wired and wireless variants, this has been the Old Faithful of controllers for PC gamers for years. 3 XBOX ONE CONTROLLER Besides stiff bumper buttons, this is like its 360 equivalent, but a little more premium. 4 XBOX ELITE CONTROLLER Quite customizable in its own right, the Xbox Elite Controller is best in class. It’s also super-expensive at $150. 5 SCUF GAMING CONTROLLER Before the Xbox Elite, this was the go-to controller for professional gamers, with its four back paddle buttons. 6 LOGITECH F710 An affordable wireless option for those who prefer a PlayStation-style controller. 7 DUALSHOCK 4 If you want to use Sony’s official PS4…

A FEW YEARS AGO, the market for monitors was as exciting as binge-watching filibuster reruns on C-SPAN. Maybe not quite that bad, but your choices basically boiled down to a couple of resolutions across a few screen sizes. There was the TN versus IPS thing when it came to panel technology, too, with VA thrown in as a wild card. And the introduction of LED backlights shook things up a bit. But the fires of innovation were hardly burning bright. Fast-forward to today, and you’ve got the opposite problem. There’s so much choice, it’s hard to know where to start. Size-wise, you can go all the way to 40 inches without even spending all that much cash. Resolutions up to full 4K are now affordable, too. And you can now…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY Pi 2 The brilliant mini-computer costs under $45. See www.raspberrypi.org. OPENMEDIAVAULT Download it from www.openmediavault.org. DO YOU HAVE A BUNCH OF USB DISKS that you juggle between your various computers? Did you know that you can plug all of them into a Raspberry Pi 2, which you can then use as a network attached storage (NAS) box? Using the Pi as an always-on NAS box sounds like a wonderful use of the silent little device. However, setting it up as one used to be an involved process. That’s until the Debian-based OpenMediaVault (OMV) distro decided to roll out a version specifically tuned to the little, power-efficient Raspberry Pi 2. Once it’s up and running, you can configure and manage the distro using its browser-based administration interface.…

THERE’S AN ARGUMENT that the recently released Fallout 4, with its bugs and creaky engine, shows that its developer concentrated on the important things, such as fun and character. And Fallout 4 is certainly a very good game. Assassin's Creed exudes a level of polish the wasteland can only dream of, but does that mean other important aspects have been overlooked? AC games follow the same rhythm as Star Trek movies. The first was pretty good, the second and its follow-up games were better. Number three was a bit of a duffer, then four majestically pulled the series back on to its sea legs (and featured whales— this analogy totally works!) before five, last year’s Unity, had horrific PC performance issues at launch, and went on to let the side…

[NOW ONLINE] BENCHMARKED: FALLOUT 4 Despite the bugs, Fallout 4 is a great game. If you’re sitting on the fence about it because you’re concerned about how it will run on your system, we’re here to help. In our online story “Benchmarked: Fallout 4,” we take a look at the game running on a wide variety of GPUs, covering both AMD and Nvidia cards. We also delve into how taxing the game is on your CPU, and we show you how you can get rid of the pesky 60fps frame rate limiter (yes, it has one of those). There is also a ton of benchmark charts! Check out our web exclusive at http://bit.ly/MPC_fallout4. CUT, COPY, PASTE * In our January 2016 issue, we mistakenly identified the Kingston HyperX Predator M.2…

There’s an unwritten rule when it comes to PC gaming: Your system is only as good as your monitor. You could have two Nvidia GTX 980 Tis and an Intel Core i7-5960X, but if you’re still running a 24-inch 60Hz 1080p panel, you may as well not bother. We spoke to Acer’s business manager of displays about his thoughts on the monitor market, what innovations Acer is bringing to the table, and the rumors of a new line of gaming projectors. Maximum PC: Can you tell us a little bit about what hardware you have on display here today? Nick Walter: Well, we’ve got every Predator gaming product here today, so we’ve got our notebooks, our desktop range, our tablets, and our displays as well. MPC: What displays are you…

The last two years have seen an almighty stirring in the foundries buried in Valve’s heartland. Mutterings on the breeze of a new operating system to rival the mighty Windows 10. A platform built and developed—from the ground up—for gamers, by gamers. Yep, you guessed right: That murmur on the wind was none other than Valve’s SteamOS, making its first foray into the spotlight. November 2015 saw its official launch into market and out of beta, and by golly, what a launch the Linux-based operating system has had. In case you forgot, this is an OS that was meant to take the world by storm, transforming living-room gaming irrevocably forever, and providing PC enthusiasts with a suitable solution to all of their console woes. After all, what could go wrong,…

examining technology and putting it to use GET RID OF THE PRE-WINDOWS 10 GARBAGE Fear the horrors that come with upgrading to Microsoft’s latest endeavor? We have a solution. First, upgrade to Windows 10 using Microsoft’s default installer. Then go to “Start,” click “Settings,” head to “Update & security,” select “Recovery,” then hit “Get started” under “Reset this PC.” Then select “Remove everything” and this cleans your drive, wiping all your old files, OSes and programs that might cause problems. MAKE – USE – CREATE COMMAND PROMPT COPY AND PASTE I get it—not everyone uses the command prompt. And I’ll be honest, it’s not the most exciting thing to talk about either. That said, if you’re in the habit of benchmarking using X264, or perhaps you’re just a Linux convert…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 10 There are solutions for other versions of Windows. DESKSCAPES Download it from www.stardock.com/products/deskscapes. FINDING THE PERFECT WALLPAPER is a nightmare for even the most eagle-eyed of hunters. If you’re used to looking around sites such as Wallhaven or Wallpaperswa, there’s a pretty high likelihood that you’re simply not going to find the perfect desktop image for your idling woes. What we’re about to teach you will alleviate that frustration. It’s hardly a new technique though. In fact, you’ll probably remember this kind of technique from awful advertisements in pop-up ads back in the nineties and noughties. We’re talking about animated desktop wallpapers. This is connected to the recent trend of reinvigorate how we look at websites—a good example being Blizzard and its latest expansion sites.…

WHEN THE ORIGINAL Surface Pro came out in 2012, it was seen as the awkward redheaded stepchild in both the tablet and laptop scenes. Through multiple iterations and levels of refinement, the two-in-one convertible has finally begun to blossom. It’s now seen as edgy and practical. It’s Microsoft’s Ugly Duckling story, if you will. As with the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft maintains its unique 3x2 aspect ratio, but bumps up the resolution to 2736x1824. The 12.3-inch screen looks absolutely crisp. Its size makes it a little awkward to hold as a tablet, but its built-in kickstand enables you to prop it up at just about any angle. All of this is housed in a silver-colored magnesium casing, which feels premium and cool to the touch. One gripe that we had…

A NEW ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH is always something special. This is because the brand is one of the most influential and innovative motherboard lineups ever released. To give weight to this claim, it’s worth noting how many firsts the brand has accrued: It was the first board to introduce a full armor covering; it was the first board to introduce full PWM fan control, with a dedicated onboard cooling processor; it was the first board to include a full rear cover to hide those garish I/O connectors; and from 2009 onward, it’s a board that’s been built around budget endurance as opposed to top-of-the-line performance. We’ve often referred to the Sabertooth lineup as Asus’s workhorse because of that very fact. So this is the Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1, the fifth…

AT FIRST GLANCE, this mouse may not look like much. It’s a far stride from the usual hyper-ergonomic, multi-colored, wireless, adjustable gaming mice we tend to feature. But that’s exactly what makes this mouse so special. It’s not about the glitz and the glam, it’s about making you the best damn gamer you can be. So who is Zowie? Well, in short, it’s a tiny company, founded in 2008, with the distinctive goal of creating perfect gaming peripherals for pro-gamers. But that’s nothing we’ve not heard before, surely? Take a look at SteelSeries, Razer, and Logitech, and you’ll discover a similar ethos driving all those companies. What makes Zowie different from the rest is how it works as a company. It’s a brand that’s not seeking to become a market…

TAKE IT FROM A GEEKSM a part-by-part guide to building a better pc Sponsored by WHEN PRICES FALL, you get more breathing room for power. Price drops for the PSU, SSD, and video card were small for each item, but represented a reduction of around $20 from last month's $843. The first thing to go was the motherboard. We replaced the ASRock mobo with the Asus H170I-PLUS. We like it because it shares many features of the Z97I-PLUS that we've put in other mini-ITX builds. Next up was the CPU. With a little breathing room, we went from the Core i5-6400 to the i5-6500. For less than four bucks, you get a near 20 percent clock increase, by going from 2.7GHz to 3.2GHz. The last change was to the memory.…