Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Maximum PC

WE DID IT! We finally took new portrait shots for the mag. The beard is gone! OK, so I haven’t had a beard for a long time, but that’s beside the point—this was the first time we managed to slot in a portrait shoot in over a year, and it all happened because of one tiny mistake. Our staff writer, Sam, embarked upon his first ever PC build this issue. I decided it was time to throw the boy in at the deep end, to get his toes wet in the murky system-building pools that are Maximum PC’s mainstay. As Sam lives so far away from the office, we decided it was best if he built the rig, took photos of what he wanted, then we would recreate that and…

AMD AND GLOBALFOUNDARIES (GF) have announced a change to the Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA), which removes all exclusive arrangements. GF was originally part of AMD; the split came in 2009, but AMD retained a third ownership. At first the pair were close, and AMD was to move most of its business to GF. But the two fell out, and AMD sold its interest in GF in 2012, so it could shop elsewhere. GF struggled to keep pace with AMD’s technical developments. When AMD reached 14nm, production was licensed to Samsung. Since then, GF has been left making I/O and legacy chips. AMD moved to TSMC for 7nm and below, but was obliged to use GF for all 14nm business. This it no longer has to do, though it has agreed…

WIN10X WAS TO BE, essentially, Windows Lite. It was a cut-down, modular version intended for more limited hardware platforms, where Windows’ increasingly bulky footprint would overwhelm the hardware. Basically, a rival for Chrome OS, which powers all those Chromebooks that cut into Microsoft’s share of the laptop market. Win10X was first in revealed in 2019, and Microsoft teased us with the Surface Neo Duo and dual-screen Surface Neo, which required Win10X to work—neither arrived. Eventually the Surface Duo emerged, but Android-powered, and poorly promoted. Then Win10X was “refocused” to x86 hardware, ditching the idea of using sandbox containers to run other platforms. The market has swung to ARM-based designs more markedly since then. It also became clear that stripping Windows down to run on small devices removes much of what…

As part of the quest to build a commercially viable fusion reactor, a team at Commonwealth Fusion Systems has developed a new type of high-power magnet, made using multiple layers of tape containing barium copper oxide, which, when cooled to minus 253 C, becomes superconducting. This is very cold, of course, but in the world of superconductivity, it’s practically warm. The magnetic tape has taken decades to develop, and means considerably less complex refrigeration is required. An experimental fusion reactor is to be built in Massachusetts that uses 18 10-ton versions of the new magnets arranged into a tokamak, a torus-shaped ring that creates a magnetic field to contain the plasma as it is heated to tens of millions of degrees.…

> PC Shutdown Woes > Zoom Black Screen > RAID in Cockpit PC Won’t Stay Off Hi Doc, I’ve built around 30 PCs over the past 20 years but have never seen this before. I recently built a new PC with Windows 10 Pro and all updates installed. My build: Gigabyte x570 PRO WIFI, Ryzen 5 5600X, 32GB RAM, 2TB MP600 NVMe SSD, RTX 3070 graphics, and EVGA BR600W PSU. If I click “Start > Power > Shut down,” the computer simply restarts. I’ve searched online, tried everything in Windows, including turning Fast Boot off, but nothing works. The only way to switch off my PC is to hold the power button for a few seconds for a forced shutdown. Obviously, I’d really like to resolve this problem and be…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM 1 FIX THE CPU COOLING BRACKET AN ODD STARTING POINT, but regardless of what you’re building, it needs to be secure. Thankfully, that’s one thing our writer knew before starting. For this PC, we need to start on the back of our motherboard by screwing in the liquid cooler CPU mount. It can be tight inside the chassis, so be careful moving things around, take your time, and treat everything delicately. Lay the bracket on a table and gently align it with the four screw holes around the CPU slot. With the correct stand-off screws that come with the Corsair cooler, secure the bracket in place for later. With the back of the mobo prepped, we can turn our attention to…

Why do we love the Raspberry Pi so much? Possibly because it’s the purest form of computer hardware. Unadorned by cases or fans or RGB (unless you want them), you’re forced to get your fingers in there and handle the PCB if you want to do anything. You can put it in a case or you can run it naked, without so much as a heatsink, but fans have to be plugged to specific pins on that tempting GPIO array. Which sparks the thought—what else can they do? It’s also a highly disruptive device. Our small computers—smartphones and tablets mainly—are sleek and expensive, and come armed with expansive software libraries. The Pi is cheap—cheaper still than many other single-board computers—and is backed by a decent software library, with a distinctly…

The Raspberry Pi isn’t the only single-board computer out there. The sector is a booming one, and they’re not even all based on ARM processors. The Rock Pi X has a quad-core Atom processor that turbos to 1.8GHz, and Intel HD Gen 8 graphics. It looks remarkably like a Raspberry Pi, although there are differences in the USB and HDMI ports. It can run Windows 10 or Ubuntu, comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and has a 40-pin GPIO header. There’s up to 4GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC flash on board, along with a microSD port, and it has its own power switch—an improvement over the Raspberry Pi. It’s a little more expensive than the Raspberry Pi, and you have to factor in the cost of Windows, too,…

Many of these are available on the Raspberry Pi imager, or as an ISO file online you can download and feed into the Imager app. For now, the best choice for most people is the 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS; it’s built on solid Linux foundations, and contains enough apps and learning tools for anyone to use the Pi happily for ages. The 64-bit port of the OS is in development, and you can download it from the Raspberry Pi forum. It’s come a long way in the last few months, but there are still things that don’t work—like the VLC media player—and it has some quirks, especially when trying to run it over VNC. It is a little faster than the 32-bit OS, and is one of the only ways…

Xiaomi Mi Watch 2021 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 They say time makes fools of us all, but that hasn’t stopped Xiaomi from working around the clock on a totally redesigned Mi Watch. Does its newest timepiece earn a place on your wrist? Tick tock, only this teardown can tell. MAJOR TECH SPECS • 1.39-inch (35mm) circular AMOLED display with 454x454 resolution• 11.8mm thickness at 32g• Wireless charging• Accelerometer, gyro, heart rate, barometer, compass, SpO2 (blood oxygen testing)• Water-resistant to 5 atmospheres• Bluetooth 5.0 KEY FINDINGS • We’re not seeing major changes in…

YOU’LL NEED THIS OCULUS QUEST 2 See our review (pg. 80) for more details. THE QUEST 2 DELIVERS a maximum bang-for-the-buck VR experience, but that’s not to say it’s perfect. For sure, the headstrap is bad, but that’s why they sell the Elite option, which should be on your wish list, especially if you have to share it with your different-head-sized family or friends. The built-in speakers are fine, but for an even more immersive experience, you’d want to invest in some good wired alternatives using the built-in audio jack. It’s these sort of low-hanging-fruit tips lesser publications would stretch out for page upon page, but there’s no such BS here at Maximum PC. So, let’s look at how to get the best from your Quest 2 and sort out…

YOU’LL NEED THIS 3D PRINTER You’ll also need a drill and drill bits, M3 nuts and bolts, and possibly some sandpaper and spray paints THERE’S A VAST NUMBER OF WAYS in which you can customize a system: using vinyl or paint, installing a full hardline loop, or even modifying the case using hand tools to create a new look. They’re all great ways in which to start modding, but over recent years and thanks to its growing popularity, 3D printing has become an excellent choice for adding a personal touch to a build. The addition of 3D printed parts can really impact the final look of a system, taking it from mediocre to standout. When there are so many builds based in the same cases, using distro plates or generic…

THIS LAST MONTH, I’ve been through ISP hell. I genuinely believe grabbing a bag of wasps, shaking it violently, then shoving my bald head inside would have been a more productive pursuit than the amount of time I wasted trying to get a coherent response from my provider’s customer support department I decided to switch back in February. I had a 145Mb/s download speed and around 17Mb/s upload with my old provider. There was no nonsense or bluster, and not a whiff of a problem. The contract was due to end, however, so I decided to swap to a similar package with another company, as it was 50 percent cheaper. I knew it was a risk, the company didn’t get very good reviews, and I was warned against jumping ship.…

THE CORSAIR ONE has always impressed us. It follows a line of crazy, out-there ITX towers that have tickled our fancy over the years. From NZXT’s H1 chassis to the tiny liquid-cooled Shift X we built, there’s just something about packing as much power into as small a box as possible that really does get the tech juices flowing. So, when we got a chance to take an in-depth look at the latest updated variant, we jumped at the opportunity. The Corsair One was, by design, a unique piece of engineering when it first debuted back in 2017, and it still is, in a lot of ways. Back then, a single 140mm fan placed at the top cooled the entire system through negative pressure and some very clever engineering. The…

AFTER THE SUCCESS of the O11-Dynamic, Lian Li is back with its little brother. The PC-O11-Dynamic Mini brings a scaled-down version of the hugely popular case to the market. It’s for those looking for something smaller, and it won’t come as a surprise, given the popularity of the original O11-Dynamic, that the O11-Dynamic Mini has flown off the shelves. Lian Li seems to have taken the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach, and rightly so, keeping it simple and literally scaling down the original to create a wondrous little case. There are some differences—there’s no ATX power supply support here; instead it relies on SFX units to help it lose some weight—but the overall look and feel of the Mini is still very Lian Li. Brushed aluminum, acrylic,…

WE LIKE AN ODDITY, and this is definitely one. An upgraded rerelease of a 2010 Japan-only PS3 game whose sequel, Nier Automata, did rather well when released on PC in 2017, Nier Replicant (that’s the full title above, we’ll not use it again) was the final game released by Cavia Games. This prolific Japanese console developer, known for the Drakengard titles, was home to Nier creator Yoko Taro, a man who always wears a mask in public. For the sequel, Square Enix, which is also behind this remaster, obtained the help of third-person combat specialist Platinum Games to spice things up. Then there was another game, Nier Gestalt, that was also released in 2010, but this time made it to North America and Xbox 360, where it was just called…

BITCOIN NEVER seems to be far from the news, whether it’s for startling rises in price, dramatic crashes, or both within days. It has always been a unstable creation, but the real roller-coaster ride didn’t start until October 2020. Recently it has been particularly volatile; as we write, a coin is worth $39,750, although it could be vastly different by the time you read this. Just within the last month, it reached $59,000, and even hit over $63,000 in April. Go back a year, and it was “only” worth $10,000. Predictions on where bitcoin will go next are pointless. Many maintain it will reach $250,000 or more within the next few years, which would bring its value to that of gold. Others forecast a fall of equally dramatic proportions. In…

TRIUMPHS ✓ FIRST 2NM CHIPS IBM has produced wafers with a transistor density of 333 million per mm2, using “nanosheets.” ✓ PHOTOREALISTIC RENDERS Intel has demonstrated a system that uses AI enhancement to render at “interactive” speeds. Results in GTA V are incredible. ✓ OVERCLOCKING RECORD Somebody has got Intel’s new Rocket Lake Core i9-11900K to run at 7.14GHz on all cores using liquid nitrogen cooling. Result. TRAGEDIES ✗ XBOX LOSES MONEY Microsoft has revealed that it has never made a profit from selling consoles. ✗ CONFUSED BY CONES Waymo’s self-driving taxis can’t cope with traffic cones; a car blocked the road and required rescue. Fully autonomous driving is still some way away. ✗ FLASH TO BE KILLED Windows is to finally kill Flash, with mandatory removal in a forthcoming…

APPLE’S NEW $29 AIRTAG is a little button you can place anywhere and locate again via an app, thanks to a unique Bluetooth identifier. The range is about 30–300 feet. If your AirTag is more comprehensively lost, you can put it into Lost Mode, and anybody pinging your little friend sees a message from you, and contact details, so you still might get your keys back. The battery lasts about a year, but it’s a regular CR2032 and easy to change (so not the usual Apple nightmare). The Bluetooth IDs and phone locations are all uploaded to Apple’s servers, but it’s all encrypted and anonymous. So, what’s the problem? Firstly, it makes covert tracking very easy and cheap. Secrete an AirTag somewhere, and the millions of Apple devices will co-operate…

PC BUILDS are second nature to us here at Maximum PC, as you know. We thrive on crafting the finest machines each month, pushing ourselves to the limit to create a build to a specific brief, and challenging ourselves to make a work of art. So, what happens when you put a PC newbie at the helm of a build? Well, you get there slowly. And our journey wasn’t plain sailing. Copious amounts of head-bashing, hairpulling, shouting, and taking parts out and putting them back in took up 99.9 percent of the time spent on this month’s build. Our writer, however, has emerged from the experience with knowledge that will stay with them for the rest of their PC building life. The knowledge of what goes where, how to fit…

WELL, THE WHITE YACHT has certainly traveled across some rough waters to finish its voyage—it wasn’t exactly plain sailing. (Sorry folks, our puns are getting out of control.) We all know first builds are awkward but we got there in the end. With patience and a level head, this build was successfully completed. As far as looks go, it sits in the classic stormtrooper monochrome design category, but that isn’t a negative. These colors are timeless, especially when sitting in the pretty yet affordable NZXT H510 case. And this PC runs as well as it looks. Any RGB color complements this look, and for the price, you cannot go wrong with the case. The actual installation was simple enough; the only hiccups on the journey were due to the fact…

Tiger Lake-H The four-core models launched in 2020, but eight-core TGL-H should arrive very soon, perhaps by the time you read this. Why didn’t Intel just skip Rocket Lake and give us Tiger Lake on the desktop? We’re not sure, but we look forward to testing the high-end mobile solution soon. Raptor Lake This will be the follow-up to Alder Lake, refining and optimizing the architecture. Due in late 2022, the feature set and socket should be similar to ADL, so it will continue to run in LGA1700 boards. Meteor Lake This will be Intel’s first 7nm CPU offering, except there’s even more to it than that. Intel will outsource the production of some Meteor Lake CPUs to TSMC. It will also use Foveros 3D die-on-die stacking, which may partly explain…

The Raspberry Pi isn’t one thing. There have been several models, some smaller than others, and it sits across a couple of market sectors. When we say a Raspberry Pi, we’re generally talking about the current “big” model—the 4B. This is the one you can see in its naked glory across the opening spread of this feature. It’s got Ethernet, lots of USB ports, and the fastest CPU and most RAM of the lot. The product of a UK-based charity (The Pi Foundation) that’s working to get cheap computers into the hands of people all over the world, the Pi 4 has four main predecessors. Starting out in 2012, the original Pi had an ARM 11 32-bit processor, 512MB of RAM, Ethernet, HDMI, a microSD card slot, 26 (later 40)…

If you buy a kit, there’s a good chance the microSD card that comes with it will contain NOOBS—that’s New Out Of Box Software, by the way, not an insult from Counter-Strike. Pop the card into the Pi and switch it on—the software talks you through the process of installing an OS, most likely the official Raspberry Pi OS if you’re just starting out. Alternately, if you’ve got a PC handy, you can use the Raspberry Pi Imager app (www.raspberrypi.org/software) to download and install one manually. You can use any size of microSD (we’ve never found the need to go particularly large; 32GB cards are common), but it must be formatted as FAT32, which the Imager can do for you, as Windows 10 probably won’t. OS images are downloaded from…

Before we get into projects and add-ons, let’s explore those two ribbon cable connections on the Pi board. One is for cameras—there are a few available, with the official board now on V2, with eight megapixels, and a decent Sony image sensor. That said, the sensor is tiny and the lens is fixed, so it’s like using a cell phone camera from 2006. There’s a version without the IR filter, too, for night vision applications, though you’ll need to provide your own IR light⃜ Perhaps with an LED and those GPIO pins? Third parties have got in on the act, too, cloning the official cameras and offering up their own compatible versions, sometimes with bonus IR lights with sensors that switch them on when light levels drop beyond a set threshold.…

IT’S FAIR TO SAY that when Connecticut-born physicist William Higinbotham started messing about with the trajectory-plotting features of the Donner Model 30 analog computer—a chunky block of metal covered in dials, designed for calculating the flight paths of ballistic missiles—he probably didn’t think he was birthing a medium that would eventually come to rival the film and music industries in terms of scale and worth. And yet, in 1958, at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, that’s exactly what he did. His initial prototype took only a few hours to design and less than a month to implement, using an oscilloscope display to render a simple “ball” and lines, along with a pair of custom-made controllers, each with a single button and dial. Two players took turns hitting…

YOU’LL NEED THIS ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC 2018 ONWARD To view compatibility visit: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/system-requirements.html. A MOCK-UP ALLOWS YOU TO SHOWCASE your designs and brandings on physical products. It’s a great way to take a look at how your creations could end up looking. Designs can look good flat, but where they shine or fall is when you take that digital design into the real world. Mock-ups are the in-between, where you can visualize your ideas and show off your creative intentions. There are a lot of premade template design mock-ups online for you to download and drop your logo right into, but sometimes you just can’t find exactly what you’re after. Or in other cases, you’re creating something completely custom, where you want to see what a design would look like…

We all know 3D films on TVs were a bust, but 3D on VR headsets is another thing—it’s like actual 3D. The Quest 2 isn’t ideal, because it’s relatively heavy, so we’re not sure you’d want to watch entire films, but the option is there. How do you enjoy films and video on the Quest 2, though? We suggest Pigasus VR Media Player ($5), which supports local but also, importantly, remote streaming via SMB shares and UPNP/DLNA sources. It didn’t have any issues playing the h.265 6K 60fps 3D video we streamed with it. If you find you’re having issues playing PC-based content, you’ll want to ensure you have the Microsoft Store Media Foundation Codecs For Windows 10 for HEVC/H.265 installed. The easiest option to solve this is to head…

YOU’LL NEED THIS ALTIRRA For more casual users: www.virtualdub.org/altirra.html. ATARI800 Advanced users: https://atari800.github.io/download.html. THE ATARI 800 series is often overlooked in retro computing, but this machine genuinely put the wind up companies such as Apple and Commodore, establishing an architecture that sold millions of units with a long production run. On its release, the 800 was ahead of its time and one of the most powerful computers around, bringing innovations such as specialized coprocessors to ease CPU load. Being an Atari machine, the 800 family features the classic Atari arcade library, but is also an essential experience for fans of ’80s micros. So, let’s take a brief history lesson before exploring how you can emulate the 800 line yourself at home. –JOHN KNIGHT 1 DEVELOPMENT AND LAUNCH The 800 series…

AMD’S RADEON RX 6800 launched last year, but in the hustle and bustle, we never took the time to give it a proper review. The higher-spec RX 6800 XT stole the limelight, with a decent jump in performance for a relatively modest increase in price. Of course, there’s nothing modest about current street prices, where finding any of the Navi 21-based cards for under a grand seems like a great deal. The main changes relative to the XT model come in the form of cores and clocks. Instead of 72 CUs, you get 60, and instead of a 2,250MHz Game Clock, you get 2,105MHz; the 6800 also has 96 ROPs (Render Outputs), compared to 128 on the XT. It still provides the full 128MB Infinity Cache and 16GB of GDDR6…

CAN YOU HAVE TOO MUCH of a good thing? That certainly seemed like a pertinent question when the AOC Agon AG493UCX arrived at Maximum PC HQ strapped to a large, wooden pallet. The box was absolutely huge. And this 49-inch monster gaming monitor is barely any smaller once extracted. It’s not the first monitor based on a huge 32:9 aspect LCD panel, of course, but such is the sheer scale of the thing and so crazily wide the proportions, it’s still an almost shocking sight sitting on a desk. And a very large desk it will need to be, too. As a gaming-focussed model, the AG493UCX runs a high refresh rate. That said, the 5120x1440 native resolution does limit options in that regard. 120Hz is your lot, as opposed to…

BEFORE EACH of the streaming sites starts throwing punches, we need to take a step back to 2011, when the way we consume music began to change. This was when Spotify was widely released and gave the world a new way to experience music consumption. Users could search for and listen to any song that was on Spotify’s online library. As a whole, we no longer physically own music; we stream it. Spotify was one of the key founders to push and innovate this new audio age, in which music streaming is a very common household service. For the full packages, you pay a monthly subscription instead of outright physically owning the music—we will dig deeper into this a little later. Since creating this advance in audio listening, Spotify has…

BUDGET THINGS AREN’T GETTING any easier on the GPU front, a re they? Prices from resellers (read: scalpers) have dropped a little since our last issue, but stock is still incredibly hard to find, and the aforementioned scalpers are still buying up as many cards as possible. We’re concerned that the arrival of the SSD-leveraging chia cryptocurrency will cause a similar shortage of drives, but the western market seems largely unaffected so far. Speaking of drives, we’ve got some new additions this month. Western Digital’s terabyte WD Blue HDDs are once again cheaper than Seagate’s competitor, saving us a few bucks on both budget builds this time around. We’ve also shaved 20 dollars off the price of the Intel machine by swapping the boot drive out for a similar P300…

Apple’s M2 chip is on schedule to make its debut inside a 16-inch MacBook Pro this July, and in other high-end Macs in the fall. Apple said it would take around two years to move to the new ARM-based silicon, and is on track to do it faster. Rumor has it that the M2 will have 12 CPU cores, eight high-power and four low-power. The graphics core count doubles to 16, giving gaming a considerable bump. It is being built by TSMC using its N5P process, said to offer around 10 percent better numbers than the regular 5nm process. The M1 impressed us all, and gave the x86 world something to chew over; the M2 manages the same trick higher up the tree. The question is: Will it be good…

I was transferred to a cancer unit at a different hospital halfway through my treatment. The new location was much more modern than the previous hospital, with all manner of high-tech, squeaky clean medical equipment. Even my IV drip had a touchscreen display. Nurses used modern (if budget) tablets to input patient details. One specialist administering my antibody injections told me with mild excitement that their department had recently upgraded all of its tech hardware. After seeing all this, I was surprised to sit down with my clinician for an appointment and watch him boot up Windows XP on a chunky tower PC bearing the unmistakable logo of AMD’s aging Athlon II processors. The hardware issue I understood; hospital funding is often tight, and buying every doctor a new desktop…

INTEL CORE I9-11900K $550 It may not have the most cores out there, and it might not be the fastest desktop processor around, but this is the best that you can get from Intel right now, and it still packs one hell of a wallop. With eight cores, plus 16 threads of pure backported 14nm performance, it’s a monstrous achievement, and credit where credit’s due, it still manages to keep up with CPUs of half its transistor size. Aside from that, it also comes with support for PCIe 4.0 drives right out of the gate, packs in a hefty max turbo speed of 5.3GHz, and actually boasts some rather impressive integrated graphics. You know, for when you sell your GPU to buy your next house. It’s also, more importantly right…

After gazing into broad wells, we’ve scoured the skies, poked at the kabies (whatever those are), drunk plenty of coffee—in two flavors—then returned to our celestial beginnings with comets. And then there were rockets. If that’s as clear as mud, we’re talking about the past seven generations of Intel desktop processors, all of which have one thing in common: They’re manufactured using a variant of Intel’s 14nm process technology. Granted, today’s 11th-gen CPUs, aka Rocket Lake, have about as much in common with the 14nm lithography of Broadwell and Skylake as the latest SpaceX vehicles have in common with the space shuttle, but that’s a long time for a company that used to pride itself on alternating between new architectures and die shrinks every year. So, we’re peeling back the heat…

TIP OF THE MONTH SYNC SCREENSHOTS WITH ONEDRIVE If you’re working between two systems and are awkwardly transferring screenshots via a USB drive, email, or such, this tip should help. Right-click the OneDrive icon in your taskbar and go into its settings. At the top, click “Back up,” then click the “Screenshots” checkbox to automatically save screenshots across your OneDrive account. Hey presto—just like that, all your print screens appear on each of your systems. MAKE – USE – CREATE 60 Make a product mock-up in Adobe Photoshop 64 Have more fun with your Oculus Quest 2 66 Mod your PC with 3Dprinted parts SAM LEWIS STAFF WRITER GETTING SPOILT As I mentioned in the previous issue, I’ve been lucky enough to receive my first headphone DAC/amps to review, but…

IF YOU’VE EVER had chemotherapy, you have my undying respect. Both physically and mentally, it’s a roller coaster that I wish I wasn’t tall enough to ride. I spent a lot of time cycling between the bed and the couch, struggling to eat or sleep. Distraction from the pain and nausea was often the best strategy, and the whole experience has given me a new appreciation for PC games as a form of escapism. I moved my PC into the living room and set up a PS4 controller link so I could play from the relative comfort of the couch. I tried to delve into some narrative-focused indie games, but found they couldn’t hold my attention. It made sense; I struggled to watch TV or movies, always thinking instead about…

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT that there’s such a thing as a GPU that’s about 20 percent faster than its predecessor and costs less money. That sounds like a good product. Sadly, only one of those things exists right now. On paper, Nvidia’s RTX 3060 continues the well-trodden path of releasing smaller and less costly GPUs that also trim performance, at a theoretically lower price. Unfortunately, cryptocurrency mining, the pandemic, and global shortages of chip manufacturing and substrates make the latest addition feel every bit as much vaporware as the other Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA2 GPUs launched in the past nine months. But these GPUs do actually exist. We have tested every one of them, and you can even find them on places like eBay. It’s just that most of…

OCULUS REALLY HAS established itself as the king of VR, in spite of its onerous Facebook ownership. With only minor quibbles, the Oculus Quest 2 is a tour de force of VR consumer technology, delivering an easy-to-set-up, affordable, slick, cutting-edge consumer-level VR experience, which works as a standalone unit or as a PC-powered VR headset. In short, it checks all the boxes. Perhaps we should deal with those quibbles. Firstly, the headstrap is poor. The Quest 2 headset is quite heavy and the awkward-to-adjust soft strap doesn’t distribute the weight very well. It’s obviously a cost-cutting exercise, because Oculus does sell an Elite Strap option. Secondly, a Facebook account is mandatory, which is an annoying and baffling move, especially considering Facebook’s recent record on privacy and security. Less quibbles and…