Innholdsfortegnelse for Xmas 2020 i APC

It’s all go in the usual places. AMD finally takes the absolute lead in CPU performance over Intel, after its boffins worked to find a 20 percent uplift in single-core performance with the new Zen-3-based 5000 Series CPUs, and we have Chris on the case in this issue with his Ryzen 5800X and 5950X reviews. Single-core was the only remaining area of performance where Intel still held on to a slim lead, so now we look to sometime in early 2021 for Blue’s response in the form of its new-architecture Rocket Lake CPUs. Fun times! Also interesting to see was just how impressive Intel’s first showing of its new Xe graphics processing architecture was, which we were able to test in the new Dell XPS, reviewed this issue – and…

As we speculated last month in APC, AMD has gone feet first into a full acquisition of FPGA manufacturer Xilinx. The deal involves an all-stock transaction, leveraging AMD’s sizeable share price in order to enable an equivalent US$143 per Xilinx share – current AMD stockholders will still own 74% of the combined company, while Xilinx stockholders will own 26 percent. The combined US$135 billion entity will total 13,000 engineers, and expand AMD’s total addressable market to US$110 Billion. It is believed that the key reasons for the acquisition lie in Xilinx’s adaptive computing solutions for the data centre market. As part of the acquisition, Victor Peng will join AMD as president responsible for the Xilinx business, and at least two Xilinx directors will join the AMD Board of Directors upon…

Western Digital is one of the most vocal proponents of the Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) storage initiative, so it is not surprising that the company became the first SSD maker to start sampling of a ZNS SSD. When used properly, the Ultrastar DC ZN540 drive can replace up to four conventional enterprise SSDs, provide higher performance and improve quality of service (QoS). ZNS SSDs have a number of advantages over traditional block-based SSDs. For one, they place data sequentially into zones and have better control over write amplification, since the software ‘knows’ what it is dealing with. This means that ZNS SSDs don’t need as much overprovisioning as traditional enterprise drives. It’s unclear at this stage if the tech will make it to consumer SSDs.…

The PCIe 6.0 technology achieved an important milestone in November, as PCI-SIG released version 0.7 of the specification. The release of the new ‘complete draft’ specification indicates that the technology has been defined and its electrical specifications have been validated using test chips. Essentially, it means that PCIe 6.0 is ready and functional, so it is only a matter of time before it is finalised sometime in 2021. PCIe 6.0 will increase data transfer rate to 64 GT/s per pin, up from 32 GT/s in case of PCIe 5.0 and 16 GT/s in case of PCIe 4.0. In a bid to increase data transfer rate and bandwidth, the new interface adopted pulse amplitude modulation with four levels (PAM4) signalling, which is also used for high-end networking technologies like InfiniBand as…

Remember back in 2017, when the average gamer could hardly find a GPU in stock anywhere in the world? Crypto currency mining became a frenzy, with users hoping for massive gains and easy riches. That bubble well and truly burst in early 2018 as most crypto crashed in value. Fast forward to late 2020 and coin values are starting to rise. Bitcoin isn’t all that far away from its all-time high, DeFi and sites like Uniswap are all the rage and Wall Street is a little less sceptical of crypto. Are the conditions set for a return to the craziness of 2017? “If you can get superseded cards like the Radeon 5700 or RTX 20 series cards and have access to cheap power, then go for it. But dropping thousands…

Logitech G203 Lightsync $48 A compact and affordable mouse with an 8,000 DPI sensor and three-zone RGB lighting, it’s a straightforward upgrade from the previous G203 Prodigy. E-Element Z-88 RGB 60% $70 With a wide selection of Outemu switches, the Z-88 is a slick 60% keyboard that is surprisingly durable thanks to its aluminum top plate. Steelseries Sensei 310 $95 Not only is it affordable, but the Sensei 310 is also one of the best ambidextrous mice on the market right now. A 12,000 DPI esports sensor sweetens the deal. JLab Audio Talk GO $90 Compact but effective, the Audio Talk GO has a solid tripod and dual polar patterns, making it a versatile choice for streamers. HyperX Cloud Stinger Core Wired $92 With a comfortable design and on-headset controls,…

5800X: $699, 5950X: $1,249 | www.amd.com When AMD launched its first generation Ryzen processors in 2016, we applauded the massive performance uplift they brought, particularly the strong multithreaded performance. One area they tended to lag behind Intel in, though, was in single threaded performance and gaming. Though the Zen+ and Zen 2 generations closed the gap, Intel was always able to compete by refreshing its Skylake architecture with significant frequency increases. “The company claims that its CPU options win in not some, but all the relevant categories, including multi-threaded performance, single threaded and gaming performance, performance per watt and value for money.” AMD believes it has reached the inflection point where it has achieved undisputed leadership. The company claims that its CPU options win in not some, but all the…

From $4,999 | store.hp.com HP has a few flagship laptops that sit in the premium ultrabook space, but while most tend to skew towards a lightweight ultrabook style, the new Envy 15 is designed to be more of a powerful premium laptop. The range opens with a strong Intel Core i7/16GB RAM/ Nvidia GTX 1660Ti configuration, which goes for $3,599. Add another $900 to this lofty price and you can replace the 15.6-inch Full HD 1080p display with a 400 nit 4K HDR monitor and dial up the GPU to an RTX 2060 (Max-Q). Both these units come with a 512GB NVMe SSD, which offers super fast 2,751/1,496MB per second respective read and write speeds. In order to fill out that premium SSD to 1TB you’ll have to fork out…

$379 | www.benq.com The world of gaming monitors is commoditised to the point where most models offer something different to everything else on the market. In the case of BenQ’s Mobiuz EX2510 its feature set places it somewhere around the top-end of the budget market and the bottom end of the mid-range market. So, who, if anyone, should buy it? The headline features iunclude a 24.5-inch, Full HD, 144Hz gaming monitor with HDR, decent built-in speakers and good ergonomics. It uses an IPS panel and subsequently offers good colour performance and viewing angles but its true black reproduction can’t rival the best monitors or TVs (not that you’d want that when competitive gaming). It makes use of BenQ’s innovative, software-based ‘HDRi’ emulation technology, which optimises contrast and colour saturation based…

Audacity | Free | www.audacityteam.org Adobe Audition | $29.99 per month | www.adobe.com/au Podcasts, eh? We’ve heard of them. If you’re going to start recording your thoughts for posterity and the amusement of your friends, then you’re going to need a couple of things. First is a decent microphone or two, of which there are many out there from brands such as RØDE, Blue, Shure, and Audio-technica. Then you are going to need software to record your podcast and edit it into shape. There are as many applications made to help with podcasts as there are microphones and subjects to discuss. We’re going to look at two of them here: Audacity, which is a free app created by a team of volunteers and released under the GNU General Public License;…

Keyboards are the true kings of input devices. They predate mice by almost 15 years, and thanks to companies like IBM – which set the standard in terms of the shape we know today – they have become perhaps the most easily recognisable and usable devices out there. In fact that tell-tale shape ensures that we can jump onto any PC we see and immediately know how to interact with it. If you think of a keyboard, you usually end up with an image of that standard 104/105-key ANSI layout imprinted into your mind. Membrane, dome, capacitive, and scissor-switch keyboards still make up the majority of the keyboards that are out there in the wild today, mostly due to office and industry use. But before we go any further on…

“Plex is proprietary software. There are plenty of other open source options and we’ll look at some of those later.” Streaming services have kept a lot of us sane over the past few months. The erstwhile occupants of APC Towers have put in a whole lot of hours binge-watching The Boys on Amazon Prime, smashing Cobra Kai on Netflix and watching endless hours of chess commentary on YouTube. Of course, we’re fans of less proprietary options too, such as the decentralised PeerTube and the plethora of content available through the likes of Wikimedia Commons and Open Culture. However, as seasoned readers will be well aware, we’re big fans of using Linux to self-host our own takes of these services. And now is a great time to reacquaint yourself with your…

01 DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL If you’re using a desktop Ubuntu you can grab the DEB file directly from the Plex downloads page. Otherwise you’ll want to copy and paste the link from there (because it’s lengthy and ever-changing) to an SSH session on your soon-to-be media box: $ wget https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server-new.../plexmediaserver..._amd64.deb $ sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.20…_amd64.deb 02 SIGN IN Plex Media Server will start automatically, and you’ll find the initial set up page at http://=<your server ip address>=:32400/web , replacing the IP address with that of your server. Sign in with your Plex account, or if you really don’t want sign up you can skip by clicking “What’s this?” and accepting limited functionality. 03 SCAN MEDIA Click through the various welcome screens. You’ll be asked to name your server and whether…

In July Plex announced over 80 channels of Live TV being made available to Pass holders. If you have a TV Tuner, then Plex Pass will enable you to stream and record local TV directly from it. If you use the Tidal music service, then you can connect Plex to that. Even if you’re just using Plex for local media, having a Plex Pass enables it to download trailers and artwork from sources such as IMDB. Pay for a premium Pass and extra features include offline media syncing for mobile devices, a server dashboard and 4K support. You also get hardware transcoding, which leverages the power of your GPU to stream to more users at higher resolutions. If you have a modern, multi-core CPU you’ll still be able to handle…

“What was surprising is what Richard said when asked about the ‘massive amounts of motherboards’ they must commit to buy from its supplier to be able to stock 3080s. Richard explained ‘buying 10 motherboards to get one 3080 is tough’.” What is going on with the GPU market at the moment? It’s running so hot right now that all new GPU releases are selling out in minutes, there are waiting lists, shipment update pages and even raffles for the ‘opportunity’ to buy a card. The RTX 3080 in particular is just a myth to most, as supply slowly trickles out to fulfil orders that were originally placed all the way back on launch day, two months ago! The latest GPU to enter the fray is the RTX 3070 with its…

Trying to get all your friends together can sometimes feel like herding cats: when Alex and Jai are free, Arusa and Jamie aren’t. If the simplest social activity seems to involve endless emails, calendar checks and texts, you’ll be delighted to discover that there’s a simpler and much less annoying way to sort out your social life: Howbout. Howbout, formerly known as Zyng, uses calendar sharing to make your social planning much smoother. Simply connect to your friends (if they don’t already use the app you can send them an invitation), enable calendar sharing and the app can automatically find out when everybody is free for real-world meetings or video chats. For real-world meets you can share the exact location of the venue so everyone knows where to go. Share…

The Raspberry Pi Camera is great fun to play with, and in this tutorial we’re going to use the camera with a push button that will choose a random filter for the image. We’ll be using the Bash terminal as our programming language, which is a great way to introduce the powerful scripting language. Hardware setup The Raspberry Pi Camera now comes in many different variations, and they all connect to the camera port of the Raspberry Pi, located just behind the Ethernet/USB ports. Open the camera port by gently lifting the plastic lock upwards, then insert the ribbon connector with the blue tab facing the USB/Ethernet ports. Close the lock on the connector and give it a very gentle pull to make sure it’s in place. Power up your…

In a joint press release, SK Hynix and Intel have announced that Intel will be selling the entirety of its NAND memory business to SK Hynix. The deal, which values Intel’s NAND holdings at US$9 billion, will see the company transfer over the NAND business in two parts, with SK Hynix eventually acquiring all IP, facilities, and personnel related to Intel’s NAND efforts. Notably, however, Intel is not selling its overarching Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group; instead the company will be holding on to its Optane memory technology as it continue to develop and sell that technology. This will see Intel’s consumer and enterprise SSD businesses transferred to SK Hynix, along with the relevant IP and employees for the SSD business, but not any NAND IP or employees.…

Official support for the Windows 10 Home or Pro editions of Windows 10 version 1809 has new ended. Originally set to fall out of support in May, Windows 10 version 1809 is officially out of support after November 10. Microsoft extended support for Windows 10 version 1809, also known as the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, to ease the transition to newer versions of Windows 10 during the current global pandemic. Usually, versions of Windows 10 only get 18 months of support, but Microsoft extended support in case people didn’t want to upgrade during the first few months of lockdowns caused by the current global pandemic. Out of support operating systems no longer receive security updates, so staying on a supported version is important.…

“According to the September 2020 speedtest.net report, the average Australian fixed broadband internet speed is 55.97Mbps. We come in just behind Vietnam (56.83) and way behind countries like Brazil, Moldova, Malta, Hungary…” Last month, much to the surprise of all, Microsoft rolled out the Project xCloud beta in Australia. The company’s Xbox department head, Phil Spencer, had already made a vague promise that it would hit the antipodes some time in 2021, but at the time even that seemed unlikely. Game streaming in Australia? It’s just not a thing. Look at all the services that have skipped Australia so far. Sony’s PlayStation Now service, a cloud gaming subscription service that launched in North America in 2014, is still a no show in Australia, with no sign of a rollout anytime soon.…

From delays to shortages, price gouging to early driver problems, Nvidia’s Ampere launch in 2020 could be the worst GPU launch in its history. It’s not that the product is bad – part of the problem is that it’s so good. Hopefully, by the time you read this, things will be in a much better state. Part of the blame goes to the COVID-19 pandemic, naturally. It’s an easy scapegoat, but there’s no denying its impact on the technology sector. But COVID wasn’t the only problem. “All indications are that Nvidia and its partners aren’t intentionally limiting supply; it just takes time to manufacture the GPUs, cards, and even packaging.” When the RTX 3080 officially went on sale on September 17, online stores were met with unprecedented demand. Amazon says…

$TBC | serial1.com Harley Davidson Serial 1 Who says you can’t have a low emissions low rider? You might think of a classic Fat Boy when the name Harley Davidson is mentioned, but when you look at the earliest Harley, known as Serial Number One, it actually looks a lot more like a push bike with a motor than a motorbike. In tribute to this original design, Harley Davidson is releasing an electric bike called Serial 1 that takes naming and design inspiration from the company’s earliest design and merges it with the latest in lithium-polymer powered push bike technology. Details are a little thin, but it looks to have a drive belt, an integrated battery and inbuilt tail lights. $TBC | press.bmwgroup.com BMW Motorrad Definition CE 04 This new…

From $2,399 | dell.com Dell’s XPS range has long been one of the best available professional ultrabooks, but the late 2020 XPS 13 (9310) has upped the ante with a new processor and a considerable price cut that puts it, once again, at the top of the game. The XPS range pioneered the race for the best screen to body ratio with its ultra slim infinity bezels, and it’s improved on them again this year by another eight percent over the earlier 2020 XPS 13. This 16 by 10, 13.4-inch display can be configured with either a 500 nit Full HD+ or a 4K HDR screen with a DCI P3 colour gamut. While the 4K model has touchscreen capabilities you can opt for a non-touch variation of the 1080p screen,…

Mac OS X 10.13 or later | from $109.95 (perpetual home & student) or $137.45 (annual business edition sub); upgrades $71.45 (perpetual) | parallels.com We’re now at peak virtualisation. Whichever operating system you want on your Mac, this is the easiest time to go virtual, and version 16 of Parallels Desktop should prove an excellent platform for almost any Intel Mac. Parallels has long been a convenient way of running Windows on your Mac without having to resort to Boot Camp, although if you have that already installed, Parallels can also run it as a guest operating system or virtual machine (VM). If you haven’t got a copy of Windows 10 to hand, Parallels can download and install it for you, and other methods are demonstrated at bit. ly/MAC357parwin10. Version…

We know what you’re thinking: “This is odd.” And you’re right – it’s not something we’d usually cover here at APC. No, this is something we’ve never done before: A case study and the chance to test something that very few people can get their hands on. So, what are we talking about? Well, we’re heading back into the world of tubing and water blocks to take a look at one of the most radical types of coolant being developed and grown today: Mayhems’ 6nm XTR. Yes, you read that right – this coolant is synthetically grown in a lab. It’s unlike any coolant we’ve ever seen before. However, there’s a few problems we need to overcome before we get to the testing phase. Firstly, as the APC office is…

Run Plex on your NAS, on Docker… anywhere! Plus a quick look at Jellyfin. As has become fashionable in recent years, you can also use Docker to install Plex. Or if like us you’ve fallen for the Portainer web management interface for Docker, you can use that. Many NAS OSes make it possible for you to install Docker images too, including OpenMediaVault (OMV). There used to be a Plex plugin for OMV, but that’s sadly no more, so onwards with Docker and Portainer! The idea is the same if you’re running Docker directly or through another NAS system, but do check the documents at https://github.com/plexinc/ pmsdocker for more details. You can, for example, skip having to claim the Plex instance using the PLEX_CLAIM environment variable. In addition, if you’re fed…

Back in 2018 Google announced it would be shutting its Google Play Music service, which gave you free storage for up to 50,000 music files. Combined with its web app for streaming them to wherever you are in the world, this service was (barring whatever shady analytics the company might be doing with data about people’s music tastes) quite a nice thing. Then in May 2020, it announced that shutdown would be happening “later this year” and provided tools to migrate users to its YouTube Music service. But if you want a new cloudy home for your music, one far from the clutches of the Alphabet corporation, consider setting one up on your own. Unlike streaming video, it doesn’t take much in the way of CPU power to run your…

Blu-ray ripping I am building a new PC to be used to rip a large collection of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, and I would like your thoughts as to which hardware would make the task faster. I use a software package called Pavtube to do the conversion. The software has an option to speed up the process by enabling Nvidia’s CUDA cores on the graphics card. I see when I look at the specs of various Nvidia graphics cards listed on Pavtube’s website that there are different numbers of CUDA cores depending on the card – from 1,536 cores (GeForce GTX 1660 TI) all the way up to 4,992 (Tesla K80). Is this important? Would an even newer card – the RTX 2070 Super or RTX 2080 Super – be…

SSH connection is typically used to connect with remote machines. It works on a client/server model, in that the machine being used to connect to a remote machine is called a client, while the latter is the server. To establish the connection with the remote machine, you must know its IP address, as well as the username/ password to authenticate the connection. Because the connection is based on IP address, any change in the IP address automatically breaks the SSH connection, turning even mild-mannered users into rage monsters. Released under Apache license, Eternal Terminal can be used as a replacement for SSH. Its call to fame is the ability to re-establish connection to a remote machine without user intervention. This is in sharp contrast to SSH connections, which once terminated…

Mass Effect kicks back into gear in 2021 During its N7 Day fan celebration in November, BioWare confirmed the long-rumoured Mass Effect Trilogy remaster. Scheduled to launch some time in mid-2021, the Mass Effect Legendary Edition will bundle all three games, as well as all associated DLC. The studio hasn’t shown any footage just yet, but all three games will enjoy optimisation for 4K Ultra HD. At the same event BioWare confirmed that a brand new instalment in the Mass Effect series is currently in development. “A veteran team has been hard at work envisioning the next chapter of the Mass Effect universe. We are in early stages on the project and can’t say any more just yet, but we’re looking forward to sharing our vision for where we’ll be…

$29.95 | PC | ageofempires.com Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition The easiest way to get into this classic RTS series. Age of Empires III comes from an era of 3D games that don’t exactly beg to be remastered. It’s a game where increased resolutions serve to highlight the half-baked animations that were previously hidden among pixels. So a remaster of this is like watching historical reenactments in 4K only to find that they’re performed by animatronic soldiers. Yet while there’s not much gained in this definitive edition, not all is lost either. Series fans will know the drill in Age of Empires III: plonk down a town centre anywhere on a map, build villagers, and scurry around extracting food, wood, and gold from the earth that you use to…

Conservatives sick of Twitter flagging conspiracy theories rush to ‘viewpoint neutral’ platform Parler creates a new parlour for right-leaning opinions to run unchallenged. Twitter has upped its response to misinformation following the US election, flagging a number of Trump’s most blatantly false claims and announcing that it will revoke its special ban exemptions for him once he leaves office on January the 20th. This more proactive response has led people who agree with the President’s more dubious claims to move to platforms that are less fussy about the truthfulness of posts. Parler, a Twitter clone that describes itself as a place to “Speak freely ... without fear of being ‘deplatformed’” has been topping the iPhone free app downloads charts. Hackers defaced Trump campaign website in the lead up to election…

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms. We know most people aren’t wed to a single brand’s products and use a variety of devices. And, like you, APC’s journalists want…

Almost a year after showing off its alpha silicon, Intel’s first discrete GPU in over two decades has been released and is now shipping in OEM laptops. The first of several planned products using the DG1 GPU, Intel’s initial outing in its new era of discrete graphics is in the laptop space, where it is launching its Iris Xe MAX graphics solution. Designed to complement Intel’s Xe-LP integrated graphics in the new Tiger Lake CPUs, Xe Max will be showing up in thin-and-light laptops as an upgraded graphics option, and with a focus on mobile creation. “The company has continuously been coy about the product, but at a high level it’s been clear for some time that this was going to be an entry-level graphics solution suitable for use in…

Apple has taken its first steps to move its Mac computers onto its own Arm-based processors and starting its two-year transition away from CPUs from Intel. Apple announced the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini with the new M1 chip, which can be ordered now. John Ternus, VP of hardware engineering, detailed the transition to the “next generation of Mac,” coming over the next “couple of years.” The first chip is the M1, which Apple’s chip lead Johny Srouji said would create a “completely different class of product. It would replace the separate chips for the CPU, I/O, and more. It also includes memory on the chip. It’s a 5nm chip with 16 billion transistors. It has eight cores, four for power and four for efficiency. Srouji said…

When Apple announced that it would drop Intel chips from its range in lieu of in-house designed processors back in June, it created a lot of curiosity around just how successful that first round of silicon would be. In November, when it announced the first Apple M1 SoCs built for PCs, Apple basically said that its first in-house PC processors in 15 years are better than anything else on the market. “The world’s fastest CPU core in low-powered silicon, the world’s best CPU performance per watt, the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer”, were just some of the lofty claims made by Apple about its M1 chips at launch. “From a CPU perspective, including this processor as a comparison isn’t that big of a deal, since it wasn’t…

Microsoft reportedly worked on the Surface Duo for six years. We can probably tear it down in less time than that, but with any brand-new form factor, there are no guarantees. Here’s hoping the Duo boasts the repairability of recent Microsoft sequels like the Surface Laptop 3 or the Surface Pro X. Major tech specs • Two 5.6in AMOLED displays (each 1800 x 1350, 401 PPI) • Two batteries working in tandem, totalling 3,577 mAh • A Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC paired with 6GB of DRAM • 128GB or 256GB Internal Flash Storage • A 11 MP f/2.0 camera, optimised for both front and rear use • Wi-Fi-5, Bluetooth 5.0, 4x4 MIMO LTE, and USB-C 3.1 connectivity hardware Key findings • It’s a non-phone, but the Duo has a removable…

The Nvidia RTX 3070 is the third Ampere card to be released and it’s a card we’ve really been looking forward to. The 3080 really surprised us with its intergenerational performance jump and relative value for money. By most standards though, it’s still a very expensive card that’s priced out of reach of most gamers. The RTX 3070 though is available for under $1,000. That’s around half the price of the outgoing 2080 Ti. Since the RTX 3070 purportedly offers performance around the 2080 Ti level, that’s an incredible doubling of ‘frames per dollar’. We have the RTX 3070 Founders Edition on hand for review. Does it deliver on its promise? Of course the RTX 3070 includes all the key Ampere features including improved ray tracing support, Broadcast, Reflex and…

$2,162 | online.acer.com.au “Acer has collaborated with specialist stylus and digital drawing pad creators, Wacom, to help give the Acer Active Stylus a smooth and natural feel when writing and drawing.” The Spin 5 is Acer’s flagship consumer 2-in-1 and although you end up paying a little more for it than the similarly specced Swift 5 laptop, there’s a few additional handy features for anyone looking to use this convertible as a tablet. Acer has collaborated with specialist stylus and digital drawing pad creators, Wacom, to help give the Acer Active Stylus a smooth and natural feel when writing and drawing. Using it with Windows 10’s write to type functionality in the search bar the stylus felt comfortable and responsive; it also offered a slightly neater flow than what your…

$949 | msi.com If you’ve got an old monitor, keyboard, and mouse lying around and you just want a basic PC that’s capable of web browsing and light office tasks, then there’s plenty of suitors, but not many are as affordable as you might think. The absolute best value PCs will be built in the same chassis as ones that are far more capable, which means they contain a heap of dead space that’ll end up occupying your desk. All-in-one’s are still a viable option, but if you have screen and interface options already then the new display is an unnecessary cost. Buying a laptop and running a HDMI, DisplayPort or USB Type-C/Thunderbolt to a monitor is still the best option, price wise at least. This is especially true if…

$749 | microsoft.com Following its poorly executed 2013 launch, the Xbox One evolved into a decent console throughout its seven year lifespan: its iterative successor, the Xbox One X, was (and still is) the most powerful eighth generation console. Under the direction of Xbox head Phil Spencer, features like backwards compatibility and the Xbox Game Pass subscription service helped bolster Microsoft’s console strategy going forward. The newly released Xbox Series X is the crystallisation of those developments: it’s a powerful modern console with a massive library right out of the gate, and a subscription service that makes games accessible for people unwilling or unable to fork out $100 for a new blockbuster title. “With the absence of a heavy-duty first-party launch title like, for example, Sony’s Demon’s Souls and Spider-Man:…

Linux | www.manjaro.org The release of Manjaro 20.0 back in April evaded the eyes of our vigilant review team, so we made sure this 20.1 “Mikah” release got the once-over. Manjaro follows a rolling-release model, so current Manjaro users don’t need to reinstall unless their current install is broken. Anyone who perhaps has dabbled with Ubuntu or Linux Mint though, should certainly consider firing up this ISO. Manjaro continues to push the Xfce edition as its flagship, so we’ll focus on that here. The Calamares installer is as polished as ever and enables you to set up a swap partition with hibernation support. It also continues to offer you a choice of office suite: LibreOffice, FreeOffice or none of the above. FreeOffice is a proprietary product that the Manjaro team…

Summer is upon us and all kind of creatures and forces are at work. The veil between the worlds is thin, and on a warm moonlit eve you might hear the call of the Old Ones. Or perhaps that’s the appeals of your long-neglected media collection, urging you to pay it some attention on these balmy nights. Either way, hunker down as we show you how to set up a top-class media server with Plex and Linux. You’ll be streaming your media all around the house in no time. With very little effort Plex gives you a Netflix-like interface for navigating your movie, TV show and music collection. If you have a TV tuner, then Plex can use that too. If you already have a NAS device, then you can…

Plex can be installed on all kinds of devices – Linux, Mac and Windows machines as well as various NAS boxes (consumer devices as well as homespun efforts using tools such as FreeNAS and unRAID). The download page at www. plex.tv/en-gb/media-server-downloads provides DEB and RPM packages, and there’s an official Docker image too (which we’ll look at later at running via OpenMediaVault). The simple walkthrough below will get you started on Ubuntu, and the idea is the same for Fedora. There’s an unofficial AUR package for Arch-based distros too. It’s worth turning remote access off when prompted by the setup wizard. You can always turn it on again later. In addition, if the automagic port forwarding works out of the box there’s a chance your Plex instance could be co-opted…

01 ANY PORTAINER IN A STORM Log into OMV and set up the OMV-Extras repo. Next, go to System>=OMV Extras>=Docker and install Docker and Portainer. Open the Portainer interface by clicking Open Web (note that it runs on port 9000 of your server) and set up an admin password. Finally, log out and log in with this, and choose the Local endpoint. 02 MOUNT AND CONTAIN In the Containers section, choose Add container and enter plexinc/pms-docker in the image box. Before we fire up the image, we need to point it to our media collection, which we’ll set up in the Volumes section by mapping /data as a Bind mount to, for example, /srv/dev-disk-by-label-RAID. Check the docs for networking options. 03 DEPLOY AND ENJOY Deploy the container and Plex should…

$3,602 | tinyurl.com/APC488PLE PLE Computers Halo 3070 This white and black beauty, like the other Intel-based systems this month, is best suited to those looking at high refresh gaming, be it 1080p at 240Hz+ or 1440p at 144Hz. This system with the new RTX 3070 – which sports RTX 2080 Ti levels of performance – is perfect for just that as the 8GB of video RAM means that 4K gaming is mostly out of the question without DLSS usage. The water-cooled CPU will be easily capable of overclocks into the low 5GHz range and with a generous 750W power supply powering it all you won’t be left wanting for more. The 1TB SSD is great to see, but the SMR-based 2TB HDD is less so, and should only be used…

Most likely, the processor in your PC has upwards of a billion transistors. Trying to get your head around the workings of such a complicated electronic circuit might, therefore, seems a daunting task. Yet helping you to understand what goes on inside a CPU is the task we’ve set ourselves here. The latest chips are complicated by many bells and whistles doing way more than straight “processing”, so we should think of a very basic chip and take it on trust that the principles here can indeed be scaled up. In 1971, the very first microprocessor – the 4-bit Intel 4004 – still had 2,250 transistors on board. While that might be a whole lot more manageable than a couple of billion, it might still seem to be no mean…

Most modern Macs look great straight out of the box, thanks to the inclusion of Retina displays that meet P3 display standards for colour accuracy. However if you’re doing colour critical design work, photography, or video editing and need to make sure the colours you see onscreen are truly true to life, then there are some handy extra steps you can take – steps that are particularly important if you’re using a third-party external monitor that may have some display quirks of its own, or should you want what comes out of your printer to be a faithful facsimile of what you can see onscreen (and vice versa). In macOS Catalina, you can easily check your display settings in System Preferences > Display, where you’ll find various options running under…

In my book, PC upgrades are all about gaining more performance, more speed. But in a COVID world where we’re all watching our spending, not every upgrade has to cost you money. These ten tips help keep my PC running at full-tilt without spending a cent. 01 Clean your PC Unless you work in an ISO 14644 cleanroom, chances are good your PC will have attracted dust, even if it has a filter. Dust on your CPU and GPU coolers reduce their efficiency and drop the cooling of those components. For your CPU and GPU, reduced cooling inevitably leads to reduced performance as temperature limits are reached sooner. Always first remove the power from your PC and where possible, remove the CPU heatsink/fan and video card cooler before you begin…