Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i Maximum PC

ACCORDING TO POPULAR CULTURE, that headline is spot on, at least. While we don’t always adhere to the idea, we can see that there are moments when free is your best option: If you’re looking at doing something as a one-off, you don’t want to drop a big bag of cash on a product you’re not going to use a lot, so free definitely makes sense. A quick look at the top-selling apps shows that the biggest sellers are all covered by free alternatives, whether you’re talking office software, security, video, image, or audio editing. Some of these free alternatives are just as feature-packed as their big-dollar equivalents. But your time isn’t free, so which ones are worth spending it with? This is where we come in, with our cover…

A LOT OF PEOPLE have given an awful lot of time to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. Launched in 2004, WoW racked up 10 million accounts by 2009, making it the world’s biggest MMORPG. By 2014, it had pushed this to 100 million accounts. It was a pivotal point in gaming: an online, interactive world, where players could co-operate in raids and quests. Over the years, it has had a series of expansion packs that pushed the game’s capabilities and scale. The original had players of up to level 60; over the years this has reached 120. This, and the increased complexity, can make it daunting for newcomers. Many older players miss the simpler times of the original, too. Well, the release of World of Warcraft Classic turns back time, and…

GOOGLE’S PROJECT ZERO aims to make zero-day problems (security vulnerabilities of such importance that engineers have zero days to fix them) difficult to pull off. Earlier this year, Project Zero was tipped off by Google’s Threat Analysis team about a hacked website that was targeting iPhone users. It found 14 vulnerabilities across five exploit chains. The website was able to install malware with root access on a variety of iPhones, and could then steal data, log activity, even passwords. These vulnerabilities had been active for two years, on multiple iOS versions. Google alerted Apple, and waited for things to be fixed. Then Project Zero went public with a report on what it knew. Apple was not happy. It claimed it hadn’t been two years, but more like two months (it’s…

Fill your PC with software or take advantage of online tools? It’s a tough one. In certain circumstances, this isn’t an option—we don’t know, for example, of an online tool that can help repartition your hard drive—but moving your work online does have a long list of advantages. Your files will theoretically always be where you left them. There’s no need to manually update a piece of online software to keep it in line with the latest developments. And your local machine stays uncluttered and unslowed by the overheads of installed software. We might have presented a list of 50 programs, but we don’t expect you to be mad enough to install them all. There’s an ever-growing string of online tools turning up. For the office, Google’s Docs suite (http://docs.google.com) has…

Gamescom 2019 kicked off in August, promising to be bigger and better than ever. With a record 373,000 visitors, it plays host to almost every major developer and publisher at the Koelnmesse event center in Cologne, Germany. This year’s iteration featured a never-before-seen pre-event announcement show, named Opening Night Live, and hosted by charismatic Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley. Opening Night Live threw out a huge variety of new announcements, trailers, and interviews, more closely resembling an E3 stage show than anything Gamescom has offered before. A combination of brand-new reveals, further trailers for upcoming games, and playable demos draws global attention to Cologne, and for obvious reasons, we’ll be focusing on the games that will be coming to PC. That means we’re not going to be delving into the…

“Wi-Fi 6 is exciting in a number of ways. Although Wi-Fi has been around for 20 years, understanding it has always been a challenge for consumers. This year, the Wi-Fi Alliance has answered the need for clarity by using numbers (4, 5, and 6) to differentiate Wi-Fi generations. It’s a lot easier to understand the step up from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6 than 802.11ac to 802.11ax, so we’re really pleased about that progress. Not only that, but it will help with educating consumers on the different speeds and versions available, to ensure that when it’s time to upgrade, they’ll know they are buying the latest standard. “As you might expect, Wi-Fi 6 brings major improvements in both speed and coverage. While each improves up to four times, of equal…

TIP OF THE MONTH SECURE YOUR EMAILS WITH FLOWCRYPT Another nifty Chrome extension, FlowCrypt seamlessly adds new security functions to Gmail, most importantly a “Secure Compose” button that lets you craft encrypted emails with ease. You can also include a personalized public key, which enables people who don’t use FlowCrypt to reply to your emails with consistent encryption. If you don’t use Chrome, it’s available on other platforms, too, including an Android app. M.2 WOES It was easy to get caught up in all the excitement surrounding NVMe Gen4, and the associated transfer speed boosts to our M.2 drives. The new drives were fast as hell, and I’m certainly guilty of squirming in joy when I saw our benchmarking software hit that legendary 5,000MB/s read speed. The write speeds are…

Logging into https://nextcloudpi:4443 gives you the opportunity to configure your underlying installation—this can also be done via the Terminal or SSH using the ncp-config tool. Configuration tools are divided into seven sections: Backups, Config, Networking, Security, System, Tools, and Updates. Start by visiting the “Updates” section. By default, you’re alerted to updates to NextCloud and NextCloudPi, but you can configure both to be updated automatically when available. Options for manually updating these and any NextCloud apps are also found here. Want to store your data on a network drive? Navigate to “Networking→samba” where you’ll see instructions for creating a shared folder with access for your NextCloud username and whichever password you specify. Change your NextCloudPi user password via “Config→nc-passwd” and your NextCloud administrator details via “Config > nc-admin.” Want to…

ANY RASPBERRY PI Plus an I2C OLED screen (128x 64 pixels), and four female-tofemale jumper wires. THE CODE Download it from http://bit.ly/lxf254i2c. THIS HANDY PROJECT results in a tiny OLED screen that provides useful data about a Raspberry Pi at a glance. We can also run our project on boot to monitor the system as we work. The OLED screen connects to the Raspberry Pi GPIO using an I2C interface. This is a special interface that only needs four pins on the Pi in order to send data. To connect your Pi, please refer to the diagram below [Image A]. With the physical connection made, we need to enable I2C on our Pi—do this in the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool. We also need to install two Python libraries for this…

WE TEND TO GET our hands on more beefy gaming laptops than ultralight notebooks here at Maximum PC, but that’s not to say that we don’t like a sleek, small, portable computer from time to time. The HP Envy 13 is one such example; picking it up, it’s difficult not to immediately like this 14.7mm-thick silver rectangle. HP has long been one of the frontrunners in the battle for the best ultralight laptop, and the company’s latest effort proves that the kid gloves are off, and HP is playing for keeps. Unlike many laptops in its class, the Envy 13 is rocking a discrete GPU. It’s nothing too impressive—an Nvidia GeForce MX250 with 2GB of VRAM—but it’s just enough to give it an edge over the many other notebooks aimed…

WIND THE CLOCK way back to 1981 and the first IBM PC, the 5150. Take a peek inside and you’d see a motherboard full of chips. But not one of them, including the CPU, had a heatsink, much less active cooling. Fast-forward nearly 40 years, and a big, fat fan is the bare minimum for a modern PC processor, and liquid cooling is almost the norm for performance CPUs. Graphics cards have followed a similar path from minimal to monumental cooling solutions. The GeForce 256 had a cute little fan; the latest GPUs require monster leaf blowers to keep cool. With the arrival of the new Gigabyte Aorus Gen4 SSD, we’re beginning to wonder whether solid-state storage could—or, perhaps more pertinently, should—head the same way. The Aorus is notable for…

THERE’S ALWAYS SOMETHING. When you dip down below $50 in the headset market, you know you’re going to be making compromises somewhere. Perhaps it’ll be comfort, or sound quality, or features and functionality—there’s always something. The trick for manufacturers operating at this price point is effectively disguising what that something is, so that when it eventually reveals itself, you don’t mind that much. So it goes with Corsair’s new HS35 headset, which takes a lot of design cues from the company’s HS50 and HS70 cans, but keeps the outlay under $50. And it just happens that this one’s especially good at playing down the inevitable compromises the pricing requires. Starting with build quality, well sure, it’s not encrusted with precious gemstones or elaborate RGB lighting arrays—and it’s all the better…

WE NEVER THOUGHT we’d live long enough to see the return of FMV, yet here we are: Four years after Her Story, with a whole new set of tapes to scrub through. If you haven’t played Her Story, why not? The game will run on the creakiest of platforms—check out the recommended specs for this one and you’ll get the idea—and was very warmly received. Telling Lies is more of the same from director Sam Barlow, but bigger in every regard. You piece together a narrative from tapes that have come into your possession. They’ve been fully indexed and subtitled, so you can search for whatever word comes into your head—the only limit is that you’re restricted to the first five hits from the search engine. Clicking on a clip…

DIGITAL SECURITY is one thing, but hardware security is quite another. The best antivirus software in the world won’t do jack if some hooligan runs off with your laptop, filled to the brim with important work files, passwords, and, uh, personal pictures. We’re not one to judge, and neither is iStorage. The DatAshur Pro 2, the latest in its line of encrypted flash drives, promises to keep your data secure, even if some nude-leaking monster snags it. This drive passes a NATO-standard tamper-proof design compliance test, so trying to break into the drive renders the contents unusable and provides evidence of tampering. On the digital side, it requires a 7 to 15-digit PIN to access, and is compatible with almost all devices with a USB port. The PIN makes it…

AMD’S RYZEN 3000 series has been a huge hit. Armed with lots of zippy Zen 2 cores and AMD’s competitive pricing, sales have been brisk. Exact figures are hard to come by, especially for the US market; retailers in other regions are more forthcoming. The major German and South Korean vendors put AMD and Intel neck and neck. This has to be taken with a pinch of salt, of course—these companies represent a fraction of the total market. One source worth taking seriously is Mercury Research, which has been producing PC component market reports since 1994. It has AMD’s market share of desktop CPUs at 17.1 percent, up 4.8 percent over a year. The 3000 series only launched in July, so we can expect things to swing even more toward…

A SECURITY RESEARCHER has found an unprotected server with a massive cache of Facebook data on it. The database contains 419 million phone numbers, including 133 million from the US. Most were linked to Facebook usernames, and many had real names, birthdays, and other personal data attached. The server’s owner was informed, and the data taken down. Facebook claimed that “The data set is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers. The data set has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised.” Are we reassured? For over a year, millions of user details were left unguarded. Who collected the data, and why? Facebook is trying to…

Thankfully, memory requirements for most of us have tapered off. The exception is for games, where higher resolution textures and other enhanced graphical effects increasingly demand more video RAM. But how much VRAM do you really need? There are several ways to look at that question. What is the minimum amount of VRAM you can get away with? What’s the recommended amount? And if you’re buying a new graphics card, should you get a model with more memory to future-proof it? Let me take that last one first, because it’s pretty simple. Outside of lower tier cards, these days we rarely have a choice in how much VRAM our GPU has. You pick a GPU like an RTX 2070 or RX 5700 XT and it comes with a set amount…

Hear us out as we use this box in an article about free apps to tell you not to use them: Sometimes it pays to pay. Sometimes a free package can’t do the exact thing you want—if you’re interacting with a business with very precise standards, a document that, say, LibreOffice produces might have subtle differences that make it look terrible on that company’s Microsoft Office-packing machines. An open-source package comes with no guarantees, no support, no comeback if everything goes wrong. It might have a forum full of enthusiastic amateurs and some official-looking documentation, but it doesn’t have any guarantee of professionalism. If it’s mission critical, don’t rely on free software. Often, free apps either lack critical features (many exist simply to tease a paid upgrade) or can’t keep up…

Unfortunately, if you fall victim to a ransomware attack and don’t have any backups, it’s probably too late to do anything about it. The usual asking price to unlock is around $500, though many variants threaten to increase this after a couple of days, and may threaten to make decryption impossible after longer. These threats just provoke anxiety in the victim, who’s more likely to pay up before considering the merits of doing so. What is important to remember is that while there’s a possibility that whoever’s in control of this malware is reasonable enough to provide a decryption key, there’s also the possibility that they won’t. Their business model, after all, is to collect payments, so why should they bother with the extra admin of sending an email after…

A hot topic among PC gamers right now is the rising “success” of real-time ray tracing in games. If you can picture us making air quotes with our fingers as we type those words, you’re right on the money; we’re still dubious about the advantages of RTX lighting and reflections as long as they remain pretty much nixed by the inevitable damage to frame rates. The trade-off of graphical fidelity against performance makes ray tracing unpopular among many gamers, particularly fans of twitch shooters. Online FPS Battlefield V utilizes ray tracing for lighting effects, but on anything less than an RTX 2080 Ti, the hit to frame rates at higher resolutions is too much to bear. Performance issues aren’t the only thing plaguing the efforts of Nvidia to push ray…

All the big router manufacturers have Wi-Fi 6 routers available already, or are due to launch them imminently. For example, Asus’s RT-AX88U is the company’s first Wi-Fi 6 router. It’s dual-band and offers up to 6,000Mb/s of Wi-Fi throughput, along with four antennas, and eight LAN ports. It costs $342. Asus also has the gaming-oriented ROG Rapture GT-AX11000, a tri-band router that can keep one 5GHz band dedicated to gaming, and costs $450. There’s also the Asus AiMesh AX6100 Wi-Fi System, which is a mesh Wi-Fi system that can cover the whole home. It should launch around the time you read this issue. As one of the biggest names in networking, it’s no surprise that Netgear is going all-out on Wi-Fi 6, and the company has a number of Wi-Fi…

Samsung Galaxy Note10+ 5G About iFixit iFixit is a global community of tinkerers dedicated to helping people fix things through free online repair manuals and teardowns. iFixit believes that everyone has the right to maintain and repair their own products. To learn more, visit www.ifixit.com. BACKGROUND Samsung’s penned the death of the headphone jack with its newest phablet, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Galaxy Note10+ 5G, but what does lie within that monolithic slab? MAJOR TECH SPECS 6.8-inch AMOLED Infinity-O display with 3040×1440 resolution (498 ppi), HDR10+ certified Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 paired with 12GB RAM and 256GB internal storage 4,300mAh battery Four rear-facing cameras (16MP ultra-wide, 12MP wide-angle with OIS, 12MP telephoto with OIS, VGA DepthVision camera), plus a 10MP selfie cam Ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensor S Pen stylus with Bluetooth connectivity and…

Take the time to explore all of NextCloud’s administrative settings—accessible when choosing “Settings” from your user menu. For example, “Overview” is where to check for updates to both NextCloud and NextCloudPi, while “Basic Settings” houses options to set up access to email notifications by linking into your existing mail SMTP server. Also make sure you explore the “Apps” section, where you’ll find all kinds of add-ons to extend your server’s functionality. This is where you go to plug in extras, such as the ability to share files via social media, or add groupware capabilities in the form of calendar, contacts, and mail—select “App bundles” to get a flavor of what’s available. That’s not all—if you’d like to do more in the NextCloud web interface, you’ll find options for adding built-in…

WINDOWS 10 You might also want to install Bitdefender from http://bitdefender.com. THE INTERNET IS FULL OF WONDERFUL THINGS, but it’s also full of malicious software. Connecting any PC to the internet without setting up any security features is a little like leaving your car unlocked in the bad part of town, with a giant neon sign flashing “Steal Me!” The good news is that it’s really straightforward to keep your PC, and your data, safe. Malicious software tends to do one of three things. It might do damage, such as destroy data. It might force you to look at pages or ads you didn’t ask for. Or it might try to access your personal data. Fortunately, as we’ll discover, Windows 10 is packed with features that can fight all three…

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP You can subscribe to a suitable package at www.adobe.com. LAYER STYLES HAVE BEEN AROUND in Photoshop for a while, but remain one of its most powerful features. They come in two flavors: the sort you click on once to get a particular effect, and the sort you spend ages painstakingly fine-tuning with small movements of sliders. When you create a Layer Style, you’re using the edge of a layer—always a floating one, the Background layer won’t do—to guide an effect. This can be a drop shadow, a glow, a complete pattern fill constrained to the shape of the layer, or a beveling effect to provide a 3D look. One of the sad things about Photoshop Elements, the cut-down little brother to full-fat Photoshop, is that it doesn’t implement…

THE X570 AORUS MASTER isn’t much to look at. Gigabyte has never been known for overly flashy motherboards, but the Aorus Master feels like it’s reached a new level of function over form. With an almost brutalist black and gray design and barely any lighting—just a few LEDs around the rear I/O—this isn’t a mobo for those trying to make their build look as bright and colorful as possible. Those LEDs are addressable, yes, but they’re distinctly underwhelming in action. Thankfully, appearance isn’t an indicator of quality. The Aorus Master might look dull, but it functions well. Looking at the raw numbers, it pretty comfortably outperforms previous-generation X470 motherboards when equipped with a new 3000-series Ryzen CPU. The performance differences are small but notable, with the exception of SSD transfer…

ZADAK IS AN ODDITY when it comes to PC component manufacturers. Formed from a group of computer hardware modders in 2015, the company initially set about selling high-end custom water-cooled systems, eventually making the leap to producing its own components. While its selection may be limited, everything is assured to be high-quality gear that Zadak’s own master modders would use. Enter the Spark RGB, Zadak’s newest memory module, available in up to 64GB kits at a monstrous 4,133MHz—we’ve got a two-stick 16GB kit in for review. The design’s highly stylized, silvery aluminum accents are evocative of an ancient warrior’s helmet, while the jewel-shaped cutouts are soft transparent plastic that illuminates in an understated but attractive RGB effect when slotted into a motherboard. This lighting is compatible with all the big…

DOES EVERY game-leaning peripheral absolutely require big flashing lights or a design that makes it look as though the ghost of H.R. Giger has returned to Earth and had a manic episode at the plastic factory? We are here to tell you it does not. For all that we love a beautiful desk, function is the strongest attribute any peripheral can have. If it does its job magnificently, that’s what is going to win us over. Which brings us to the Asus ROG Strix Carry, a gaming peripheral that indeed bucks the trend. There are no lights. There’s really nothing in the way of glitz, outwardly, and indeed no room for it, because Asus has carved away just about all it can in pursuit of creating a portable wireless gaming…

ONE YEAR AFTER Nvidia announced realtime ray tracing as the Next Big Thing™, we’re finally starting to see the tech put to good use. We’ve had Battlefield 5’s ray-traced reflections, Metro Exodus’s raytraced global illumination, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s ray-traced shadows. Control ups the ante by including raytraced reflections, transparent reflections, diffuse lighting, and contact shadows. Of the ray-traced effects, the reflections and transparent reflections are the most noticeable. Thanks to the indoor office environments of The Oldest House, there are plenty of shiny surfaces and partially reflective windows. The contrast between ray-traced and traditional rendering can be massive. Once you’ve seen the glorious ray-traced goodness, it’s hard to go back. Naturally, there’s still a performance hit. The “medium” ray-tracing option (just reflections and transparent reflections) knocks frame…

LAST MONTH, Intel kicked off its new generation of Ice Lake CPUs, carrying the new 10nm Sunny Cove microarchitecture, with 11 low-power chips for mobile devices. This month, the range has been filled out by another eight processors, again all low-power U-series and Y-series parts. They run from a Core i7-10710U with six cores and an all-core boost of 3.9GHz, down to a Core i3-10110U, with two cores running at 3.7GHz. The four new U-series chips also get support for LPDDR4X memory, with a 32GB maximum, and all get Wi-Fi 6 support. The U-series runs at 15W, while the more abstemious Y-series runs at 7W. However, these aren’t Sunny Cove parts. The new chips are all 14nm Comet Lake chips, which use the old Skylake microarchitecture. This means you don’t…

If you’ve been using computers for any amount of time, the FAT32 filesystem should ring a bell. The File Allocation Table (FAT) filesystem has been around since the days of DOS and Windows 3.11. However, different iterations have passed throughout the years, following the capabilities and memory address capacity of processors. The original FAT was 8-bit, while FAT16 saw use in PC DOS and up to Windows 3.11. The 32-bit FAT32 was a staple for storage during the proliferation of 32-bit systems, with a maximum drive capacity of 2TB. The modern exFAT filesystem represents the 64-bit address space that modern systems have, and it can handle disk sizes of up to 512PB (petabytes). For consumers, these huge volume sizes mean very little—it’s unlikely anyone is ever going to need anything…

One of the most beautiful things about Linux, besides its inherent freeness, is that people are able to package it up with all kinds of also-free software, and send the whole thing out in one big bundle. Given that it’s (usually) possible to run a Linux installation in Live form (that is, without installing it and making a mess of your precious internal drives), this can be a good way to keep those rarely used utility packages at hand, or get your hands on a whole bunch of software all at once. So, pick up some USB sticks, get these apps installed, and be ready for anything. #1 FOR PRIVACY TAILS http://tails.boum.org When you’re getting all clandestine, turn to Tails. It automatically routes everything through the Tor network, keeping your online…

There are all kinds of devious methods that unscrupulous scammers use to get hold of unsuspecting marks’ data—whether it’s tricking them to install ransomware or some other kind of malware, such as a keylogger, or having them visit a booby-trapped website and enter valuable credentials. Most people nowadays know better than to reply to an email purporting to come from a Nigerian prince who needs some help organizing a wire transfer for his considerable inheritance. Indeed, most scammers no longer bother with these kinds of ruses; their game has been considerably upped. They may play on local events, especially natural disasters. They may also send targeted email based on public information harvested from the target’s social media accounts. For this reason, you should be extremely careful about what information you…

Google Stadia was the hottest piece of hardware on show at Gamescom, with more triple-A titles being added to its burgeoning launch roster. Alongside Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Metro Exodus, and Destiny 2, Google has added a number of new titles that will be available on Stadia from day one, including Watch Dogs: Legion, Cyberpunk 2077, and Marvel’s Avengers. As far as we’re concerned, the jury’s still out. Demos performed better than the dicey showing at this year’s E3, where the Doom Eternal demo proved to be visibly choppy when streamed on Google’s new platform. Somewhat tellingly, though, most of the games on show were single-player titles, free of the rigors that online twitch shooters might experience while being streamed. Google has doubled down on marketing for the Stadia, pushing ads…

1 SCREEN QUEEN The 17.3-inch screen is as clear as crystal, with a crisp 144Hz refresh rate at 1080p, and support for Nvidia’s G-Sync. Outputting video is dead simple, too—hidden at the rear of the chassis are both a DisplayPort and an HDMI port, prepped to handle multiple monitors as part of a home or work setup. 2 STAY FROSTY The vapor chamber is equipped with two high-speed fans, one for the processor and one for the GPU. Just visible underneath an RGB-lit panel of reinforced glass are five copper heat pipes, expertly dissipating excess heat. Those fans can get mighty noisy when overclocking, but this system can definitely handle the heat. 3 HIGH POWERED Our model came with an i9-9980HK and RTX 2080 GPU—none of that Max-Q nonsense. The…

NEXTCLOUDPI Download this preconfigured instance of NextCloud for Raspberry Pi, Debian Stretch, Dockers, and VMs from https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi. THERE’S ONE MAJOR PROBLEM with cloud storage: Who’s in control of your data? Thankfully, NextCloud gives you the best of both worlds—all the functionality found in cloud services such as OneDrive and Google Drive, but crucially your data remains in your possession, distributed among all your devices, and held in your choice of central location, typically a USB drive or network attached storage. NextCloud runs on a variety of hardware—natively on Linux-based machines, or through Dockers and VMs on other platforms. We’ve chosen to base this tutorial on NextCloudPi, a dedicated and preconfigured NextCloud instance, with most of the technical work of initial setup and configuration of databases done for you. We installed…

1. SWITCH VIEW Click here to move between files, activity, gallery, and other configured tools, such as calendar or contacts. 2. SETTINGS Click here to show or hide hidden files and reveal the address required to access your files via WebDAV. 3. FILE PICKER The contents of the selected folder are displayed here. Click a file to download it, or right-click for more options. Click the “Sharing” button to reveal the properties panel shown on the right. 4. USER MENU Click your user avatar here to reveal a drop-down menu giving you access to settings, apps, and help. Administrators can also create new users and manage existing ones from here. 5. SHARING OPTIONS Click “Share” to reveal these tabs. Use “Comments” to attach comments to files, and “Sharing” to access…

WINDIRSTAT Download this analytical tool from https://windirstat.net. CCLEANER You can grab it from www.ccleaner.com. ALTHOUGH SSD PRICES KEEP FALLING every year, they’re still significantly more expensive than an HDD of equivalent capacity. That means your SSD is likely to fill up much more quickly than a similarly priced HDD, leaving you scrambling for ways to free up much-needed space. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to reclaim storage space on your SSD. From moving system folders to disabling hibernation, it can be both quick and straightforward to get back precious SSD space. However, before we dive in to the steps you should take, the first thing to do is work out where the culprits lie. We recommend downloading the free tool WinDirStat. It scans a selected drive on…

WITH MANY boutique builders out there, Velocity Micro stands out from the crowd in some interesting ways with its Raptor Z55. The front of the case has a dark brushed aluminum finish, and there’s a cutout glass panel with a mesh vent beneath for airflow. It’s an interesting design choice, seeing as most modern cases opt for a full tempered glass panel, but it’s still a sleek full-sized case that’s not too big, and not too bulky. It manages airflow efficiently by pulling cool air from the bottom of the case—interestingly, this is enough to keep the entire rig cool without the aid of other fans at the front or back. The sides snap on and off from the case, instead of being secured by magnets or screws, but they…

A THOUSAND BUCKS is a bundle of cash for a PC monitor. It’s the kind of budget that buys you a lot of choice. Everything from 4K resolutions and high refresh rates to true HDR visuals, massive panel sizes, and more are on the menu. At first glance, therefore, Asus’s $1,000 ProArt PA34V looks pretty pedestrian. With a 34-inch curved panel, a mere 3440x1440 pixels, and 100Hz refresh, it’s hardly poverty stricken when it comes to features, but can it justify that four-figure price tag? It all comes down to remit. The ProArt is pitched at professional content creators. Given how expensive such screens can be, $1,000 doesn’t seem so punchy. What’s more, while a 34-inch curved 1440p 100Hz gaming panel isn’t novel, it’s unusual in the pro space. Asus…

PARIS, 1980, in the retrofuturistic New Order timeline. The Nazis still rule Europe through their usual mixture of massive lasers, cybernetically enhanced supersoldiers, and dogs wearing suicide vests, but the Resistance fights on and Terror Billy is still alive. He’s thriving, in fact, having produced two daughters. In Wolfenstein II, there’s a section in which a character gains a new lease of life, and some sweet combat moves, from a super-suit built from ancient technology “Why aren’t we playing that game?” we asked, as she kicks Nazis through windows. Youngblood looks like it could be that game, as our super-suited co-op protagonists are young, exuberant, call each other “dude,” and have some excellent eye makeup. They also hang out with their nerdy friend who makes supersuits in her bedroom, making…

> Compact Powerhouses > Liquid Assets > Airport Absence Good-Looking Gaming I’ve been a reader since Boot #1 and your magazine has guided my builds and upgrades for a long, long time. My current system is an i7-3770K based system that I built back when that chip first launched, and it’s housed in an even older Gigabyte Aurora 3D 570 case. With a GTX 970 video card and 16GB of RAM, it still handles Overwatch and WoW at 1920x1200 just fine. However, there’s no escaping that it is old, and with games like Cyberpunk 2077 and MechWarrior 5 coming, I can see a new system sometime soon in my future. I plan to go to a smaller form factor, and I’m not sure I want to build my next one.…

The latest tale from the Borderlands starts off easy on hardware, but you’ll need to bring the big guns for higher resolutions. Early impressions of Borderlands 3 suggest that, despite seven years (and a raft of rival loot shooters) having passed since Borderlands 2, Gearbox has stuck to its however-many-millions of guns. At its core, Borderlands 3 is still about ganging up with a few friends, extinguishing a few thousand lives, and using the bodies as randomized loot vending machines. What has changed is the tech. The jump from Unreal Engine 3 to UE4 has brought improved lighting, shadows, and effects to the signature hand-drawn style, and publisher 2K says the game was “developed from the ground up” to take advantage of AMD’s most recent Radeon GPUs and third-gen Ryzens.…