Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i APC

WELCOME | EDITORIAL You all build your own PCs, right? I hope the answer to that is a big ‘no’, and that’s ok. There are plenty of reasons why you would just buy an off the shelf desktop system – but – there’s also a bunch of great reasons why you should consider the DIY way. You can save a decent amount of money, which can be kept in your pocket, or re-invested into better components. Then there’s the plain old thrill of the project. There’s nothing quite like the nervous moment when you hit the power button for the very first time, and then (hopefully!) watching it come to life. And of course, for as long as you run that PC you just might find yourself flush with pride…

OPINION | TWO BITS We live in a world chock full of data. Some estimates put the total worldwide data storage demand at up to 200 zettabytes by next year. That’s 200 billion terabytes! And it’s increasing by ever higher amounts every year. That’s more than a few 3.5-in floppies. Obviously, that means there’s a need for a lot of devices to store it all. Those devices are typically made up of hard drives, solid state drives or tape. Such solutions are becoming inefficient in terms of power usage, heat generation and physical footprint. A new solution is needed, and one of the more promising ones in the pipeline is not electronic, but biological. I’m talking about DNA based storage. DNA storage is the process of storing traditional binary data…

You might think that it’s overkill to use high-end headphones for gaming, but they can transform your experience. They can make your games sound so much better than a cheap headset ever can. However, when it comes to gaming and PC usage in general, it’s worth noting that quite a few audiophile headphones lack microphones, but that’s less of an issue now that you can get a good USB microphone for so little money. Plus, some headsets have microphone attachments you can order to convert your set of cans into a gaming headset. 5 NURAPHONE These beautifully designed cans are noise cancelling masters, and even come with an app that can customise the EQ to your ears. The result is rich and detailed soundscapes unlike anything else out there. These…

The time has come for the big reveal – as we announce the 2024 winners across all categories of the Australian PC Awards! After exhaustive testing, comparisons, benchmarking and taking into account value, innovation, quality and features, we have our winners. Everything important that goes inside a PC, connects to a PC, or is important to the PC has been rated by the team of experts at APC, TechRadar, PC Gamer, PC PowerPlay and Tom’s Guide. If you’re looking for an upgrade – this is the list you want. And if you’re planning a complete new rig, well you can’t go wrong with choosing the gear here. Maybe you already run something we’ve awarded, in which case you are 100% entitled to feel chuffed about your wise purchase. The team…

Here at APC, we’re specialists when it comes to, you know, building PCs. It is our bread and butter, and we’ve been doing it for a heck of a long time now. This journalist alone has logged no less than 63 separate build logs, and built many more. Along the way, we’ve picked up a ton of tips and tricks to make the process as painless and seamless as possible. It’s this knowledge, these ingrained subtle refined notions and ideas that have turned even the most challenging of concept system builds into paltry, simple, and easy-to-produce machines of mayhem. They can be crafted on a whim, and knocked out in less than a few hours. Here, we’ll be divulging all that information to you. Yes, we’ve scoured the team’s collective…

Budget. A perfect balance between price and performance. CES HAS COME and gone. One of the most exciting launches for us hardware folk, however, had to be Nvidia’s Super line-up. Now all three are out there in the wild, they’ve shaken up what GPU should fit where in your next build. The thing is, our budgets aren’t quite so generous, and sadly only one of the cards made it into this month’s Blueprints. But more on that later – we’ve got a budget build to go over first. This month has been fairly hectic. A number of parts have changed across both systems, with memory, SSD, and motherboards all on the chopping block for both builds. AMD in particular saw an increase in the CPU price, countered by a drop…

LIBREOFFICE CALC Change the colour of the text-overflow indicator If you type too much text into a cell in your table, LibreOffice Calc shows a small arrow at the right of the cell. This is red by default, but since LibreOffice 7.6 (released last August) you’ve been able to change its colour. Click Tools at the top, then Options. In the box that appears, expand the LibreOffice menu in the left-hand panel and click Application Colours ( 1 in our screenshot below). Scroll down the right-hand side until you see ‘Text overflow’ 2 , which should be ticked by default. Now click the Automatic dropdown menu beside it, and choose a new colour from the list. We chose a bright green (Accent 1, 40% lighter 3 ). Click Apply, then…

No matter what your system specification is, even if you are running a 12-core machine with hundreds of gigabytes of RAM or more, you will experience bottlenecks. And you will want to use a system monitor to see just what nefarious process is hogging your resources. This is the law. It’s also why there are so many resource monitors on offer for Linux distros. For most Linux users, Top is the de facto system monitor, and you can think of Btop as a super-charged variant. Written in C++ and released under the Apache Licence 2.0, Btop itself boasts a rich pedigree. The project can trace its roots back to earlier iterations such as Bashtop and Bpytop, written respectively in Bash and Python. At first glance, Btop is just another resource…

GAMES PRICE Free PLATFORM PC WEB Ahchoo.itch.io/stretchmancer Stretchmancer is a puzzle game with an original central mechanic: you can squish or expand the world at ease. Say you need to squeeze through prison bars. Just stretch the room until the gaps are large enough. As with Portal’s titular gun, it’s so much fun to just use your power, turning a small room into a lengthy corridor or contracting the walls to bring a distant platform closer. You can push or pull almost any wall in the game as you advance through its small selection of puzzle chambers. Stretchmancer’s wonderfully silly story plays over the top. As you puzzle your way around the prison, its alien characters interject with funny dialogue and ridiculous plot twists. By contrast, there’s a defiantly amateur…

GAMES PRICE Free PLATFORM PC, browser WEB twitwi.itch.io/risingup In the cheekily titled Rising Up a malfunctioning printer breaks down in this sidescrolling action game, and you, an office worker, loses his rag and goes on a rampage. If you’re familiar with Streets of Rage, this plays almost exactly the same. Enemies (as in your co-workers) attack you, and you defeat them to advance across the stage. What stands out here is the pixel art, which realises the heightened, comic violence of the premise with exquisite attention to detail. Take any frame of animation – from the cluttered desks in the background to the chaos happening in the foreground – and you could frame it and hang it on the wall. It’s not a huge game, but you would need to…

Download these APC exclusives free from: www.apcmag.com/exclusives ASCOMP CLEANING SUITE SYSTEM CLEANING AND TUNING FOR WINDOWS. A total of six helpers analyse your system and enable deep cleaning operations. For example, you can delete temporary files, clean browser histories, caches, and cookies from all popular Internet browsers, and prevent installed applications and tools from starting automatically at system startup. The Windows Registry can also be optimised by Cleaning Suite in a targeted manner. The Windows software proceeds very carefully to ensure unrestricted use of your computer even after the cleaning process. On top of that, Cleaning Suite provides advanced features for the Windows Recycle Bin. ASHAMPOO PHOTO OPTIMIZER 2024 ENHANCE PHOTOS QUICKLY AND AUTOMATICALLY. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2024 is the simplest and fastest way to edit photos in a single…

OPINION | END USER The games industry is extremely unhealthy right now. Over ten thousand workers were made redundant in 2023, and in 2024 that number has almost been met in a fraction of the time, with around 8,500 redundancies recorded as of mid-March. The most visible mass redundancies come via the big names like Sony, Microsoft, EA, Embracer Group and Epic Games, but smaller companies and indies are also in dire straits. Many believe it’s a course correction after pandemic-era revenue spikes prompted a big recruitment drive. Others point to forecasts that AI will streamline certain labour-intensive aspects of development. But whatever the reason, it points to an inherently volatile industry that is struggling to find success in an age where games are either an astronomical success, or simply…

OPINION | TRADE CHAT I’m not just talking about overpriced graphics cards, but the underlying cost of manufacturing advanced integrated circuits. A chip manufacturing expert from Google, Milind Shah, thinks so, recently declaring that the per-transistor cost stalled as far back as the 28nm node over a decade ago. That’s pretty worrying, but it can’t possibly be true. Here’s why. This gloomy observation has been accompanied by data plotting the cost of 100 million transistor gates across multiple generations of chip production. It shows the cost plummeting from 90nm to 65nm, falling steeply again to 45nm, with another decent drop at the 28nm node. And then nothing. Actually, it’s worse than that, because the graph shows a gentle incline. It’s more expensive to manufacture 100 million gates using today’s most…

PRICE $239 WEB www.thermaltake.com.au Thermaltake has augmented its Tower line with colourful, windowed, octagonal, Micro ATX cases, called the 300 series. Black and White versions are available in Australia but more-colourful variants will appear down the line. For a Micro ATX case, it sure ain’t small, but there’s much to like about the aesthetics and the superficial design features. For one thing, twin, thermodynamic-friendly 140mm exhaust fans reside at the top and there’s room for six more (120mm or 140mm). Another can sit opposite, near the base. You can access the internals by either gently yanking the top off, unscrewing two thumbscrews and flipping open the panel holding the two fans. Doing this gives you access to the motherboard’s I/O ports which, perhaps, isn’t the most user-friendly way of accessing…

WEB www.snipca.com/49145 NEEDS Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11 One of our favourite programs of 2023 (get it from www.snipca.com/49146) has received its first update of 2024. The biggest change is to HiBit Uninstaller’s VirusTotal scanner, which checks that programs and services running on your PC are safe to use. This has been redesigned to provide faster scans for malware through the dozens of antivirus engines used by VirusTotal (www.virustotal.com). Click the Tools menu and select one of the ‘manager’ options, such as Process Manager, Startup Manager or Context Menu Manager. Check the VirusTotal column to see how many antivirus engines have detected threats in the listed programs or processes. You can scan entries manually by right-clicking them and choosing ‘Scan with VirusTotal’ (see screenshot). HiBit Uninstaller has also improved its…

From the front lines of the Australian PC market Nvidia’s 4000 Super series has launched and been selling for over a month now. As anticipated as they were, they haven’t had as much of an impact on the market as probably Nvidia would’ve liked. Though they’ve certainly shifted things. The RTX 4070 Super is the star of the three new cards. With over 20% more shaders on tap it’s a sizable upgrade over the original. Unlike the other two Super cards though the RTX 4070 Super will continue to exist alongside its non-Super variant. The other two will replace and supersede their non-Super versions. Unfortunately, the performance uplift of the RTX 4070 Ti Super and the RTX 4080 Super are slim to none. The RTX 4070 Ti Super offers just…

ANDROID & iOS Create an ‘art selfie’ with Google Arts & Culture Google has updated its brilliant Arts & Culture app for Android (tinyurl.com/ APC531ac) and iOS (tinyurl.com/APC531acio) with a new AI-powered feature called Art Selfie 2. The original Art Selfie found your ‘art lookalike’ by matching photos of your face to the subjects of paintings in galleries and museums around the world. It was complemented by the app’s Art Transfer tool, which let you apply different artists’ styles to your pictures, and Art Filter, which inserted your face into famous portraits. Art Selfie 2 combines and refines the second two features (all three are still available), allowing you to ‘remix your selfie with art and AI’. To try the feature, press the Play tab in the bottom-centre of the…

GAMES PRICE $29.50 PLATFORM PC, Switch WEB braceyourselfgames.com/cobalt-core Cobalt Core is full of triumphant moments. It’s a series of wonderfully tense turn-based spaceship standoffs. You’ve got your little ship, a handful of cards that let you move, fire, shield, and more, plus a limited pool of energy that refreshes every turn. This will all feel familiar to anyone who’s lost a lifetime or two to Slay the Spire. What sets Cobalt apart is the focus on movement. Each turn you’ll see the enemy ship’s intentions, which are usually ‘shoot you’. You could build up your shields, but wouldn’t it be more satisfying to strike before they even know what hit them? One ship can shift to the left or right if you use the leftmost or rightmost card in your…

GAMES PRICE $59.95 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5XB1/S/X WEB theinquisitorgame.com There’s no doubting the pitch for The Inquisitor catches the attention. You play Mordimer Madderdin, a holy inquisitor of the church whose job it is to hunt out heretics and enforce the faith – even if that means a spot of torture. That faith, by the way, comes courtesy of none other than Jesus himself, who in the world of The Inquisitor did not die on the cross but instead broke free from it and then went on a bloody rampage across the world. The Inquisitor opens with Mordimer being dispatched by the church to investigate rumours of a vampire operating in the 16th-century town of Koenigstein, where he soon discovers a series of bloody ritualistic murders, as well as strands of…

GAME CHANGER RELEASE November 14, 2019 DEVELOPER Teyon PUBLISHER Reef Entertainment LINK teyon.com I ditched Terminator: Resistance soon after starting it back in 2019, writing it off as yet another dismal movie tie-in from Polish developer Teyon, creator of 2014’s lambasted Rambo: The Video Game. But after enjoying RoboCop: Rogue City late last year, I wondered whether I’d been too quick to dismiss Teyon’s earlier work. While no masterpiece, Rogue City is a faithful and thoughtful adaptation of Verhoeven’s film, one that does a good job of embodying you in Alex Murphy’s metal exoskeleton. And although Resistance was fairly well panned by critics at the time, it has garnered a ‘Very Positive’ rating on Steam in the years since release. Hence, Terminator: Resistance seemed ripe for reappraisal. And having now…

OPINION | TECH TALK Alongside the introduction of the RTX 40-series Super models, we recently saw the launch of AMD’s RX 7600 XT. I think it’s fair to say that this entire generation of GPUs has been disappointing on the whole, but AMD’s offerings were particularly bad. The previous generation of GPUs were plagued by scalpers and cryptocurrency miners jacking up prices. If that wasn’t bad enough, AI and deep learning have come of age. Add China tensions and restrictions on what can be manufactured and sold, then factor in rising costs of chip manufacturing technology, and we have the current situation. Consider that cache and memory interfaces don’t scale as well with process shrinks, and the larger L2 cache sizes on Ada, and you can see why Nvidia reduced…

OPINION | ONE MORE THING They say you should never meet your heroes, but they are wrong. No-one is perfect, but my heroes have a spark, a passion and a genius that showed you why they had succeeded in their chosen field. In the early 1980s, the One True Goddess was Joni Mitchell. The words “voice of an angel” wouldn’t even begin to describe the talent of this lady. Every album, every song is there to be savoured time after time. Her career spans so many decades, over various genres, that dropping in on a random playlist of her back catalogue never becomes boring. The next song is always a treat, a delight that can make your heart soar and plummet to the depths. I remember listening to the radio…

Find the best deals on new gear at getprice.com/au Premium laptops Apple MacBook Pro 16in (M3) STUNNING CREATIVE POWER A reasonable processor upgrade to device with an impressive screen and unparalleled battery life. The new M3 3nm processors is more efficient, so you’ll be able to run the same tasks as the M1 using half the power draw, which helps battery life. From $4,299, apple.com/au THE ALTERNATIVES ASUS ZENBOOK 14 OLED (UX3405) The Asus Zenbook 14 is a great option for those who value a fantastic OLED touchscreen, long battery life and a powerful CPU. $2,399, asus.com APPLE MACBOOK AIR The MacBook Air M3 replaces the M2 model previously listed here. It’s a powerful and quiet ultraportable with an unbeatable battery life and screen. From $2,099 apple.com/au MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO…

PRICE $649 WEB www.storexp-pen.com.au The Artist Pro 16 Gen 2 is a drawing tablet – and one with high-end features that will more than justify the price for serious artists. While the first model was a chunky grey affair with built-in buttons, this version has a sleeker, cleaner design, with the controls moved onto a compact wireless remote. This features ten customisable shortcut buttons, plus a programmable circular dial, and it allows you to be productive with both hands as you work. At the back are two kickstands, which can either recess into the body or fold out to prop up the screen at a fixed 19° angle. Buttons for power and brightness sit on the upper edge of the tablet, plus two USB-C ports for connections to your computer…

WEB www.snipca.com/49149 NEEDS Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11 PrivaZer is one of the most powerful free tools for erasing traces of your PC and web activities. The latest version improves the program’s scans of SSDs, so it can detect and delete more files in your drive’s free space – including references to items you’ve previously removed. Click ‘Scan in-depth’ on the home screen and select your SSD to perform a thorough privacy scan and clean-up. PrivaZer has also updated its ‘Restore points’ feature, which lets you create system-restore points before you wipe files from your PC. You can now increase the size limit of restore points, so Windows doesn’t automatically delete smaller back-ups. Choose ‘Restore + Repair’ on the home screen, followed by Restore Points. Click the Modify link next…

COVER FEATURE Software doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You can get all sorts of apps for free, covering all manner of uses. There are free word processors, graphics editors, games, media players, utilities and more. Don’t assume that because an app is free, it’s less capable than a paid-for piece of software. In many cases, the free app is the best one for the job. Some are coded by programmers that work for the love of their art, others are released by professional software publishers but released without charge, alongside their paid-for apps. In this feature, we take a look at some of the best free software available for all your gear. Whether it’s for Windows and Mac, Android smartphones and iPhones, tablets and iPads or the Apple Watch,…

MWAVE ICONIC RP $1,899 tinyurl.com/APC531mw When it comes to value gaming systems, this is right in the mix. Sporting a previous generation Ryzen 5 5600, it won’t be the fastest around but is more than capable of running any modern title, so long as you aren’t aiming for over 144fps. The graphics card is great in this category, just keep in mind the 8GB of VRAM will become a limiting factor at 1440p and up, especially if you want to enable raytracing. The rest of the system is modestly specced, though having 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage will keep this system relevant for a long time. Solid value. CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600; Cooler COOLER Master Hyper 212 Halo; MOTHERBOARD Gigabyte B550M Aorus Elite; GRAPHICS Gigabyte Geforce…

WINDOWS 10 & 11 Swipe your touchpad to close windows You can configure your laptop’s touchpad with advanced gestures that perform different functions using one, two, three or four fingers. You can swipe up and down with two fingers to scroll on a page, for example. When you swipe up with three or four fingers, you open Task View. But you can change these to perform other tasks, if you want. One useful function is to hide all windows apart from the one you’re focusing on. Type Advanced touchpad into Windows search, then click Open. In Windows 10 click the Up dropdown menu under ‘Configure your three finger gestures’ and choose ‘Hide everything other than the app in focus’ (see screenshot below). You can also choose this setting in the…

IT WILL TAKE10 minutes YOU WILL LEARNHow to navigate the changes to the TV app made in tvOS 17.2 YOU’LL NEEDAn Apple TV running tvOS 17.2 GENIUS TIP! If you’re in a noisy place, you can improve your Shazamming chances by holding your phone closer to the speakers that are playing the song. We love Shazam almost as much as pub quizmasters hate it; it can automagically tell you what song is playing after listening to just a few seconds of it. That makes it a menace if your rival quiz team is using it to cheat during a music round, but it’s helped us discover and fall in love with some of our favourite artists. If you can hear it clearly, Shazam can usually tell you exactly what it…

YOU’LL NEED • Pico W• Breadboard• DHT11 sensor• 3x male-to-male jumper wires• Network• Code: tinyurl.com/ APC531mqtt The Internet of Things (IoT) is hard, right? Wrong. It is easy thanks to MQTT and Node-RED. For this tutorial, we are building a simple Raspberry Pi Pico W-powered sensor that sends data to a Pi-powered dashboard running on Node-RED. The protocol that we’re using is called MQTT and there are more details in the boxout (opposite page). There is only one sensor connected to the Pico W. This is a common DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor, which can be picked up cheaply and is often bundled in electronics kits. The DHT11 has only three connections to the Pico W: 3V, Data and GND (red, yellow and black wires in the diagram). Please refer…

GAMES PRICE Free PLATFORM PC WEB grimhook.com There’s nothing grim about first-person action adventure Grimhook: a delightful game about movement, and unleashing mayhem on a horde of cute little robots. It feels a lot like Titanfall 2, a game that was surely a massive inspiration. The protagonist has the same ‘earnest everyman’ quality as Cooper from TF2, and while you don’t buddy up with a mech, you have a similar relationship with your magical sidekick, who lives in a jewel and bestows your movement powers. Waking up beside a shipwreck with only a big hook for company, you have to leap around a system of caves, find your way out, and learn what’s happened to the world. The biggest wrinkle is combat, which I wasn’t expecting to make an appearance,…

GAMES PRICE $36.50 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X WEB lowbirthgames.com In This Bed We Made you play as Sophie, a maid in a 1950s hotel. But if you’re looking for an immersive maid sim you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re looking for a nosy amateur detective adventure where you get to indulge your inner snoop you’ll find a great little game here. Considering how much shady activity they’re involved in, the guests of the Clarington hotel are incredibly careless about leaving out incriminating correspondence, detailed records of debts unpaid, and all sorts of juicy puzzle pieces that you slowly slot together to create a picture of the room’s occupant. The game is told in flashback, framed by Sophie’s interrogation by a police detective. You can choose to throw away certain objects…