Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 277 i PC Powerplay

We haven’t heard anything about the co-op Siege spin-off Rainbow Six Quarantine since its announcement at E3 2019, but thanks to the power of investor calls, we have a better idea of its release date. According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, Rainbow Six Quarantine will release before the end of the fiscal year. That translates to any time before April 2020. Quarantine was initially announced as an early 2020 game, but this narrows in the date further. As Game Informer pointed out, Ubisoft has a pattern with its releases in the beginning of the year. The company usually releases a game in either January for February, and Quarantine is the most likely candidate for that slot.…

HEAVEN’S VAULT “The game will often tell you when a guess is correct, while also allowing you to make, and link together, gigantic mistakes.” DEVELOPER INKLE LTD • PRICE $36 https://www.inklestudios.com/heavensvault/ I love stories involving a person (and their robot) wandering the desert. Blame independent American film, Everything Beautiful is Far Away, perhaps. There’s just something so dissonant about machines on sand, as if there should be an explanation for why this unlikely context has arisen, yet you can’t quite grasp it. Heaven’s Vault is not set in an ordinary desert, either. Aliya Elasra and her unlikely companion, Six, visit a Nebula’s arid “moons”, via a network of “rivers” made of hydrogen, oxygen and other gases. Incredible, right? Moreover, you’re an archaeologist, but for a university of cultists who believe…

Keanu Reeves is no stranger to bleak sci-fi visions of the future. He was, of course, the star of The Matrix – the story of an office drone who learns that the world is a simulation created by machines. He also starred in Johnny Mnemonic (the film The Matrix could have been) as a data courier in a world dominated by megacorporations. And in the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly he played an undercover agent working for a government engaging in invasive high-tech surveillance of its citizens.…

DEVELOPER PIXPIL • PUBLISHER CHUCKLEFISH • RELEASE TBA www.eastwardgame.com One look at Eastward, and you can immediately tell what made the pixel art aficionados at Chucklefish fall in love with it. From colourful environments filled with detail to the unique characters softly bouncing with each breath, Eastward feels alive, even though it’s set in a world that’s anything but. With Eastward, developer Pixpil has decided to go all out – the first project for the Shanghai-based team is looking to Japanese RPGs from the late ’80s and early ’90s for inspiration, a genre that originated enduring videogame characters and approaches to adventure gameplay. You take control of John and Sam, a taciturn miner and a small girl with a magnificent mane of white hair. Together they travel a post-apocalyptic world.…

DEVELOPER BLUE BYTE • PUBLISHER UBISOFT www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/anno-1800 This is comfortably the most engrossing city-builder I’ve played since Cities: Skylines, one that combines an intriguing theme with some enjoyably complex production chains and trading mechanics. It also has a wealth of buildings to construct and resources to produce, letting you construct some truly impressive and enormous urban sprawls. Anno 1800 puts you in the hobnailed boots of an up-and-coming business magnate in the burning heart of the industrial revolution. There are three ways to play, Campaign, Sandbox, and Multiplayer. Structurally, they’re all basically the same—the campaign is itself a gigantic sandbox that happens to feature a chain of missions to follow. CLASS WARFARE In its early stages, Anno 1800 is a straight-up city-builder. Progress in Anno is predicated upon two things—population…

DEVELOPER DEADTOAST • PUBLISHER DEVOLVER www.devolverdigital.com/games/my-friend-pedro The gamers running at me have swords, because all gamers own swords, I guess. They also have Monty Python Dark Souls cosplay armour but it can’t save them from the shotgun blasts that reduce them to lumps at my feet. I’m out of ammo before I’m out of gamers, the last one charging with sword held high. But any object you kick is a one-shot kill in this game, and dead gamer lumps are kickable objects. There are more impressive gun-fu stunts in My Friend Pedro than breaking somebody’s neck by kicking their dead friend’s torso at them, but this moment of improvisation is typical of what happens between gif-able highlights. Once or twice per level I’ll do something absurd like skateboarding through a…

DEVELOPER ASOBO STUDIO • PUBLISHER FOCUS INTERACTIVE www.aplaguetale.com On a lovely afternoon in autumn, Amicia De Rune is out on a hunt with her father and the family dog, a scene so warm and tranquil you just know things are going to go very wrong very soon. That doesn’t make it any less shocking when Amicia suddenly comes face to face with the Plague, which manifests itself not only as a horrible disease, but as a teeming mass of rats that devours everything in its wake. Amicia and her father make their way home, only to find the Inquisition at their doorstep. For reasons unknown they want Amicia’s little brother Hugo and are not above slaughtering their way through to him. Due to an illness, the small Hugo’s lived a…

When you’re building a new PC, sometimes the memory can be almost an afterthought. Many buyers don’t look beyond three key parameters: capacity, speed and price. These are obviously important, but there’s more to it than that. Read on as we take a deeper look at some of the things you need to keep in mind when purchasing that shiny new kit of RAM. We’ve also got a roundup of kits from the biggest names in the market HOW MUCH RAM DO YOU REALLY NEED? This is an age old question frequently found on tech forums. As DRAM prices continue to fall in 2019, 16GB is becoming the standard amount being equipped in new systems. Laptops or lower end systems will be fine with 8GB for the most part if…

PRICE $179 www.corsair.com The Corsair Vengeance Pro is of course a DDR4-3200 kit with 16-18-18-36 timings. Though a look at the many tight XMP sub-timings reveals why the Corsair kit is often in near the top of the benchmarks leaderboard. While looks are always objective, the Vengeance RGB Pro has a lovely design with its nice and dare we say simplistic metal heat sink. Our kit came with a black finish, though Corsair also offers it in white. The top section of the module is lit with RGB LEDs and the colors are notably distinct and rich. Corsair’s iCUE software deserves a mention. Of course it controls the RGB effects of the Vengeance Pro kit and it can control other Corsair products too. It also offers additional functionality such as…

PRICE $219 www.gskill.com G.Skill is well known in overclocking circles for its willingness to push the envelope with ever faster memory kits. If you’re after maximum performance, G.Skill is usually in the shortlist. The Trident-Z range has been available in one form or another for many years, but never has it looked like this. It comes sheathed in a magnificent mirror like silver or gold finish. It really does give that wow factor when you open the box for the first time. Even the packaging is a premium match for the kit. The gorgeous finish is complemented by a sparkling crystalline light bar. As it’s a clear plastic material, the colors are especially vibrant and accurate. Colors bounce around everywhere. Look are always subjective, but this is the best looking…

THE REPUBLIC OF GAMERS CROSSHAIR SERIES The Crosshair VIII boards are designed for the serious overclocker and the gamer who wants to eek every bit of power from their system. These boards will push your PC to the next level, and future-proof it for years to come. The Crosshair VIII Formula sports an integrated VRM water-cooling solution with its CrossChill EK III hybrid water channel, as well as active chipset and M.2 aluminium heatsinks to keep it cool as it goes to work. With a huge VRM, 16 PowIRstages and MicroFine Alloy chokes, this is a board designed to push the CPU as hard as it will go, while remaining stable with a constant flow of power. The unit hosts a 1.3 inch OLED display for information on CPU speed,…

PRICE $848 www.asus.com/au/ “Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me!” The wife had a point: even without its antennae in the recommended, partially-reclined configuration, the Rapture is a huge, ungodly beast that cannot be discretely positioned in any home. We put off mentioning the colossal $848 price tag. Despite the dimensions, Asus’ gargantuan gaming router only has four Gigabit Ethernet ports though there is a 2.5Gbps W/LAN port to complement the primary WAN. The main features lie inside and a quick glance at the browser-based Dash Board is instructive. The homepage displays the all the main statuses plus live graphs showing network traffic, average network pings, ping deviation(!), global game server pings plus Aura RGB lighting effects for the top logo and settings that configure a programmable button…

The nature of the PC as a, shall we say, collective instrument of sub-systems designed by different companies, and replaced by new versions at different rates, or becoming suddenly obsolete or integrated into so other system, and so forth, means the importance of each of those systems changes over time. Importance to the gamer I mean. Consider the importance of your choice of CPU vs your choice of GPU, for example. And therefore, so too has the way we brag about our awesome systems evolved, over time. And bragging about your PC has never been easy. And rarely has it been something non-PC geeks understand. See, your basic geek... they’re brand or platform focused. They started early. Console kids were fighting it out with primitive tools over first the Atari/Commodore,…

DEVELOPER: SPECTRUM HOLOBYTE PERSONALITIES: GILMAN LOUIE RELEASED: 1991 NUTSHELL: DESPITE NOT HAVING TEXTURES, IT BROUGHT (CLAIMED) MILITARY-GRADE FLIGHT MODELLING TO THE PC, WITH SUCH EXTREME PREJUDICE THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME, IT MADE PEOPLE UPGRADE THEIR COMPUTERS JUST TO PLAY THIS SINGLE GAME. The PC didn’t become the tech-leader for gaming just because of hardware. After all, what’s the advantage of a PC that can play games just as well as other platforms, if it costs five times as much? The PC needed to show there was a reason for all that grunt. And at the dawn of the 1990s, that reason was the PC owner’s thirst for insanely detailed combat flight simulators. For the first few years in the market, gaming on an 8086-based, “IBM-compatible” PC was a distraction,…

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen a handful of SSD announcements that focus on faster speeds enabled by supporting the PCI Express 4.0 bus. Patriot will eventually get around to launching a PCIe 4.0 SSD of its own (more on that in a bit), but in the meantime, it’s rolling out a new SATA line that is much more affordable. Patriot’s new P200 series comes in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. Only the first two are in stock and available to purchase right now, but here’s how pricing breaks down for all four: • Patriot P200 2TB SSD – US$239.99, Patriot (~$0.12 per gigabyte) • Patriot P200 1TB SSD – US$110.99, Patriot (~$0.11 per gigabyte) • Patriot P200 512GB SSD – US$49.99, Amazon (~$0.10 per gigabyte) • Patriot…

1 BUILD-AN-ASTRONAUT ”To simulate actress Kezia Burrows in zero G using mo-cap we used a system where we’d capture her limbs separately and then blend them together. Chris Wilson, lead animator, would also do swimming motions lying down on a stool.” 2 HOME OFFICE “On the actual ISS, laptops are just stuck to every surface at every angle. Most of these laptops run on DOS and they run one specific programme only, so you don’t lose lots of crucial data in case of a malfunction.” 3 FOUND FOOTAGE “Cameras on the station are all of the same quality because we wanted tech to feel unreliable as a whole, to give you a sense of unease. The interference and glitches make it feel like they might fail at any minute.” 4…

1989 A sinister organisation made up of high-ranking members of the CIA, NSC, FBI, and DEA secretly runs the United States behind the President’s back. 1994 A nuclear meltdown occurs in Pittsburgh, PA. Almost 300 people die and cancer rates skyrocket. The exclusion zone around the reactor is named The Pitt. 1996 A catastrophic societal collapse begins. Martial law is established in the United States, the President is killed, and street gangs take control of the country. 2002 An event called the Food Crash occurs. Crops around the world are ravaged by a virus, but the United States defeats it by developing a counter-agent. 2004 The first Corporate War begins. Two megacorps, Euro Business Machines and Orbital Air, engage in a campaign of cyber-warfare after a deal falls through. 2017…

“I’m trying to be accurate to biological science and evolutionary theory.” DEVELOPER JUMP OVER THE AGE • PUBLISHER FELLOW TRAVELLER • RELEASE SPRING 2020 www.jumpovertheage.com In Other Waters shrinks the entirety of an alien ocean into one interface. You’re the AI that accompanies xenobiologist Ellery Vas on her dives into the oceans of Gliese 667Cc in search of life that may help sustain mankind, while trying to find out what happened to her partner, who disappeared during a prior mission. All you see of Ellery’s adventures is a map – Ellery herself is a little dot, as is everything she encounters. As you scan the environment for anything from environmental clues about the ecosystem to plants and creatures for Ellery to study, descriptive text from the interface itself as well…

What makes a movie, comic book, or video game feel like Star Wars? This is the question every creator has to wrestle with when they’re approached to work on a story set in that universe. When George Lucas began working on the original Star Wars in the 1970s, his aim was to make a film that looked timeless – never mind the endless budgetary and technical limitations he had to contend with. Production designer John Barry and set decorator Roger Christian proposed the notion of a “used universe”, a term that’s come to be associated with Lucas and the success of the classic trilogy over the years. The idea was to avoid the polished chrome and utopian vistas of earlier science fiction movies in favour of something a bit more…

DEVELOPER EUGEN SYSTEMS • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE www.steeldivision2.com A grandiose rendering of World War II’s Eastern Front, Steel Division 2 details Operation Bagration, the Red Army’s back-breaking push against the Nazi war machine. It’s an ambitious real-time strategy game, and though it ultimately fails to live up to a lot of that ambition – especially with its singleplayer campaign – the vastness of its battles captures the scale of total war with lavish detail. Tactical battles are the heart of the game, real-time conflicts pitting dozens of units against each other in conflicts that feel real. Battles with ten players on each team, each commanding a couple dozen units, feature prominently in online play and take place on a map so big you couldn’t hope to support your furthest ally if…

DEVELOPER FROGWARES • PUBLISHER BIGBEN INTERACTIVE www.thesinkingcity.com Plagued by nightmarish visions of a drowned city and a colossal tentacled beast, private detective Charles Reed travels to the town of Oakmont to find answers. Storms have been battering this once thriving fishing community, cutting it off from the mainland, flooding parts of it, and leaving the rest sodden and dilapidated. And to make matters worse, the locals are deeply suspicious of outsiders. But with the source of these harrowing visions lurking somewhere in the city, Reed has no choice but to get his feet wet. The Sinking City is a third-person detective adventure set in a fictional version of 1920s New England, inspired by the works of influential (and, yes, controversial) horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Divers uncover an ancient cavern hidden…

DEVELOPER MODE 7 GAMES • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE www.frozensynapse2.com Amid Evil’s worst weapon is a staff that shoots blue homing blobs – pathetic water balloons that splash against low-poly demons, many of whom look like what you’d get if you coated a bunch of triangles with super glue and threw them in a dryer. I don’t like it or the moments when I resort to it, but I can also use the entire Earth as a grenade, which more than evens things out. Amid Evil is good. It’s a throwback FPS like Dusk, but rather than the hitscan headshots, Amid Evil recalls Heretic and Hexen’s magical weapons. The staff sucks, but there’s also a magic sword, a grenade launcher that shrinks and fires planets (like the Earth), a spike-firing morningstar, a…

DEVELOPER BLUE MANCHU • PUBLISHER HUMBLE BUNDLE www.voidbastards.com Ever since BioShock Infinite released and Irrational in its previous form went away, I’ve gladly played any games that offer a comparable experience. That is, a first-person shooter where you have more at your disposal than just cool guns. Void Bastards is described as a strategy shooter inspired by System Shock 2 and BioShock, and it features the talents of some former Irrational staff who previously made 2013’s Card Hunter. You are a prisoner, travelling across the galaxy to fulfil the whims of an HR computer that might eventually grant you your freedom. You get across the map with an FTL-style interface, and while most locations are enemy spaceships that you can board, loot and escape, there are also stores, asteroid ranges…

PRICE $159 www.xpg.com In such a crowded and competitive market, sometimes memory products have little to differentiate them. When a product like the Adata Spectrix D60G manages to undercut the competition on price, you simply have to sit up and take notice. At $159 the Spectrix D60G offers the best value of the all the RGB kits in the roundup. Normally that alone would be enough to take out a winners gong, but this Adata kit is not some bargain basement kit. The Adata Spectrix kit comes with primary timings similar to the other kits in this test at 16-18-18-36- 2T. It’s good to see Adata hasn’t taken the easy option by equipping poor memory ICs. Its performance was consistently at or near the top of the 2x8GB kits thanks…

PRICE $149 www.patriotmemory.com Patriot is a brand that doesn’t have the Australian market presence of the likes of Corsair or G.Skill, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not well regarded in the global PC market. The company is also popular amongst gamers with its Viper gaming brand. The Patriot Viper Steel we have on hand to test is the cheapest kit in the roundup. It matches all of the other kits with its CL 16-18-18-36 primary timings so stock performance doesn’t suffer in any way. Of course as a value oriented kit it doesn’t come with RGB or an extravagant heat sink. Its grey metal covering is well suited to a neutral color build. As a budget kit, these modules are likely using more affordable Hynix ICs which aren’t known…

PRICE $3999 www.acer.com One of the most striking features of the Triton 500 is just how thin it is. With a closed profile of just 1.8cm it’s knocking on the door of ultrabooks despite being a 15.6-inch performance gaming laptop. The sleek Triton 500 can be configured to have an Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, 32GB of RAM and 512GB of NVMe SSD storage. This is a surprisingly powerful set of components to conceal in such a sleek form factor. The metallic clamshell comes in a subtle blue-black colour and while it does have angular bevelled edges, powder-blue rear exhaust vents and a unique mosaic topside fan inlet, overall, its understated and classy design would slot neatly into a business environment. The membrane keyboard is…

PRICE $228.95 www.creative.com The G6 is the successor to the G5, but also carries the legacy of the E5, a mini-amp that worked wonders with both PCs and mobile devices. With a 130dB and 32-bit/384kHz DAC, plus support for Dolby Digital decoding and 5.1 and 7.1 virtual surround sound, there’s a lot under this small hood. The device itself is only a little bigger than a deck of cards, so it doesn’t need a lot of space, though cables need to be plugged in from two ends. The main advantage in something like the G6 is its compatibility on both ends. The PC or console side is one thing, but the fact that any pair of headphones will work on the other negates the need to buy a dedicated gaming…

Falcon 3.0 used military simulator data to make its flight model as realistic as possible, but it was still a game. Falcon 4.0 was, straight up, like being in the USAF. In 1998 it looked amazing and ran like a dog’s breakfast. Yet its dynamic battlefield and incredible detail meant modders refused to abandon it. From the miasma emerged Benchmark Sims, a team that created new theatres, fixed bugs, upgraded visuals, and did so much to Falcon 4.0 that its eventual publisher (Atari) sent a cease-and-desist letter. Fortunately, Atari got distracted by its endless financial problems, and BMS exists to this day.…

Players participating in Gears 5’s recent multiplayer tech test have noticed the game is sporting an impressive suite of accessibility features. As showcased by Ablegamers program director and community specialist Craig Kaufman on Twitter, Gears 5’s accessibility reach is extensive compared to most games. To start, Gears 5 has several features that are becoming more common among AAA games, like color blind modes and enhanced aim assist (here it’s a “target lock”). Though, it also has features that are still pretty rare, like options to adjust the size of subtitles and make button mashing moments require a hold instead. It even has both speech-to-text and text-to-speech for multiplayer chat. I’m very curious to know how user friendly and accurate the program is, but it’s cool to see it included at…

I’m in LA, in a ‘secret location’ – it’s a warehouse – to experience the grand unveiling of Borderlands 3. It’s early in the day, and I’m still slightly jetlagged. On stage, projected onto a giant screen, Claptrap is doing a dance. His shrieks echo throughout the building. Having established that the series’ mascot is back, and – depending on your perspective – as funny or as too-irritating-for-this-time-of-the-morning as usual, the demo continues. There’s banter, there’s wasteland combat, and there’s a miniboss. “Shiv,” introduces the title card. “Brought a knife to a gun fight.” Borderlands is back. I’m initially underwhelmed. The early demo introduces some new movement options – sliding and mantling – but nothing that feels like a bold new direction for the series. An iterative sequel is all…

In the new CGI trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, unveiled at Microsoft’s Xbox E3 Briefing, main character V is having a bad day. His partner, Jackie Welles, is dead. His fixer, Dexter DeShawn, has betrayed him. When he regains consciousness, he’s lying in a garbage dump. “Wake the fuck up samurai,” says a voice. “We have a city to burn.” The source of that voice? It’s Keanu Reeves. Cue rapturous applause as Reeves appears on stage to talk about his appearance in CD Projekt Red’s next RPG. It was an exciting surprise in an industry event that rarely keeps a secret for long. But who is Reeves’ character, and why is he so interested in V? “Keanu Reeves in our game plays the role of Johnny Silverhand,” says Paweł Sasko, lead…

“The studio’s playing with a licence that’s been developed over decades.” DEVELOPER LARIAN STUDIOS • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE • RELEASE TBA www.baldursgate3.game Divinity:Original Sin 2 developer Larian Studios is working on its follow up to one of the best RPGs on PC – a third adventure with a new party of heroes. Just what you’d expect from Baldur’s Gate III. Cue fainting elves and gasping halflings. Eighteen years after the Bhaalspawn saga came to a close, we’re finally returning to the Forgotten Realms. The world’s moved forward quite a bit since the last games, so instead of picking up where its predecessors left things, Baldur’s Gate III is a brand new adventure set in the Forgotten Realms as it is today, where Bhaal’s unruly kids are history. Not to worry, though,…

DEVELOPER CREATIVE ASSEMBL • PUBLISHER SEGA www.totalwar.com/games/three-kingdoms Two of my generals dismount in the middle of a field to duel with their opposing numbers. The rest of the battle continues in the distance, but I’ve zoomed in to watch the flashy moves as the generals kick and stab each other instead. Occasionally a flurry of arrows or a riderless horse will pass in the background, but for the moment I’m intently focused on something that looks more like a game of Tekken. Total War: Three Kingdoms embraces the story it’s inspired by, Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, rather than strict historical accuracy. Soldiers can run around the battlefield seemingly forever without getting tired. Their leaders are larger-than-life figures with complicated backstories and rivalries, who carry legendary spears…

DEVELOPER CODEMASTERS • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE www.codemasters.com/game/f1-2019 It seems obvious now in retrospect. The best way for an annualised, licensed motorsport game to stay fresh every summer when the latest iteration trots out onto the Steam Store is, clearly, to chuck in an entirely different racing series as well. With the inclusion of the 2018 F2 championship, F1 2019 feels for the first time in the series like a wider world of motorsport, offering that irresistible rags-to-riches journey in career mode and a handling model all of its own to master. It makes a lot of sense. Codemasters has had the handling down for years now, twitchy and frightening, and giving just the right amount of rumble in your hands as you wrestle your car implausibly fast over an impeccably rendered…

DEVELOPER ARTPLAY/INTI CREATES/WAYFORWARD • PUBLISHER 505 GAMES www. 505games.com Five years ago Koji Igarashi, director and writer on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, left Konami to make another Castlevania-style game. Five years is a long time, and the Metroidvania genre has grown substantially in that period, but sometimes you don’t want a variation on a familiar theme. You want the same game in a new package. Rejoice, because with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, that’s exactly what you’re getting. Miriam is a science experiment in the shape of a dolled-up anime girl. Together with her friend, a man named Gebel, she was part of an experiment that transplanted the essence of demons into her body. This demonic power comes in the form of shards, thus she’s called a Shardbinder. The…

DEVELOPER MODE 7 GAMES • PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE www.frozensynapse2.com After years away you have returned home to your village in response to an urgent letter from your father. Three men try to kill you the moment you step off the train. The town instantly knows about this and blames you for some other recent murders. To top it all off you’re also quickly dying of hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and blood loss. That’s just day one in this strange, gruelling survival game. Pathologic 2 is “supposed to be almost unbearable” according to devs Ice Pick Lodge, who created the obtuse, near-unplayable original Pathologic, and purgatorial horror game The Void. Pathologic 2 challenges you to survive 12 in-game days in a town that’s going completely to shit. Disease, paranoia, mob justice, and paranormal…

PRICE $329 www.hyperxgaming.com Kingston’s HyperX Predator is the second of two 3200MHz 32GB kits in our roundup. A 2x16GB kit is perfect for demanding users or those limited to two memory slots such as you’d find on an ITX motherboard. Its primary timings are 16-18-18-36 at 1.35v. The Kingston HyperX Predator is a non RGB kit. While it’s perfectly suitable for a gamer thanks to its inherent double rank performance advantage (albeit a small one) its lack of RGB means it probably won’t find its way into a blinged up system. That will suit many people just fine. The Hyper X kit shares quite a lot in common with the Crucial kit. In fact other than a few secondary sub-timings, the entire list of timings we could read were identical.…

PRICE $169 www.teamgroupinc.com Take one look at Team’s Night Hawk memory. It’s definitely got the most extravagant design of all the kits in the roundup. If you’re after something eye catching, it’s one that you’ll want to strongly consider. The Team Night Hawk RGB memory has impeccable build quality. It just feels solid, weighty and well made. The white heat sink of our test kit extends well beyond the top of the modules so this will be something to keep in mind of you’re planning to use a large air cooler. We can’t imagine you’d be doing that though. This is a show off kit for a water-cooled build! It’s also got an interesting default RGB effect with a fast pulse to go along with rotating colors. The Night Hawk…

PRICE $469 www.razer.com The Razer Core X is the spitting image of Razer’s more expensiveCore V2, but larger at 6.6 x 14.2 x 9.1 inches. The case is constructed out of hefty metal with a black painted exterior. There are cutouts on each side of the outer shell, providing cool air to the Core X’s internal fan and your GPU. The front of the case features a slotted design while the bottom has a wide rubber foot to keep the case stable. The Core X features the same simple sliding mechanism in Razer’s flagship V2, which makes it easy to open. Pulling the rear folding panel unlocks the mechanism, allowing you to pull the GPU dock out. Just be sure not to carry the Core X by this handle, as…

The way you express yourself in your PC build is important for many enthusiasts. You do the research, you figure out what parts you want, and you make sure that it looks good inside and out. Your build might be different depending on your taste, the set-up in the room you want your computer in, and your reason for building the machine. But no matter what’s on the outside, a good, smart chassis is what you’re going to spend most of your time looking at. If you’re going to be sitting at your PC often, perhaps you don’t want anything gaudy, or a design that’s going to feel dated down the track – but you also don’t want to sacrifice on style. The Thermaltake H200 Mid-Tower Chassis has an extremely…

Nintendo Switch Lite Price: $329.95 • Distributor: Nintendo www.nintendo.com.au To someone who only ever uses their Switch in its portable form, the Switch Lite is quite a fantastic option for on-the-go gaming, though its price reduction and increased portability comes at a cost. POWERED UP: It’s smaller, it’s cheaper, and it plays (most) Switch games. Also comes in three colours (announced so far, though it seems entirely likely we’ll see more colours and game themed editions down the road). You can still pair detachable joycons with it too, so all is not lost on that front. PLAYED OUT: Making this cheaper and more compact means compromise: fixed joycons (so no games that require them detached and flailing around), no output to TV, is not compatible with the OG Switch dock,…