Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i Maximum PC

FOR THE LAST FEW YEARS, it’s felt as though CPUs have been the bridesmaid, never the bride. With the rise of AI, cryptocurrencies, and gaming during and after the lockdowns, it’s felt like all the love has been reserved for GPUs. There have been so many stories to cover—the rising price of premium graphics cards (the RTX 3090 launching at $1,499, then the 4090 for $1,599). Intel entering the market with its Arc series. AMD achieving dominance in the nascent handheld space started by the Steam Deck. The list goes on. But this year has become all about the CPU. Qualcomm shook things up with the first Arm-based chips to run Windows—not just that, but powering the next generation of Microsoft’s OS in the form of Copilot+ PCs. And now…

Boil it down to basics, and the PS5 Pro is a $200 premium for a GPU upgrade. The rest of the PS5 Pro’s hardware hasn’t changed much. But the uplift from $500 to $700 puts the Pro into territory where it might just have to fight to justify its existence. As a gaming platform, a $500 PS5 versus a $500 ‘gaming’ PC was always a bit of a non-starter. It’s just not enough money to build a decent entry-level rig. But $700? Well, that’s a little more plausible. In graphics rendering terms, you’ll struggle to match a PS5 Pro with a $700 PC. The new PS5 Pro has a revised GPU with 60 AMD compute units. That’s the same as a desktop AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, which goes for…

IT’S FAIR TO SAY that we’ve written quite a bit about artificial intelligence over the last few months. In fact, as a whole, the industry is more fixated on the word “AI” than anything else right now. How can you use it? How much power does it require? How do LLMs work? X versus Y. There’s a lot of information, as well as some quite technological terms, to digest. Right now, as the field continues to advance, seeing how companies and applications shift and change with the movement of public opinion is fascinating. Whether that’s AMD or Intel releasing CPUs with dedicated NPUs, or system integrators focusing on their latest batch of “AI” systems, or the memory market sucking up as much NAND as it can get for massive servers,…

The ethical and philosophical quandaries that AI poses are numerous. Not only is there the potential for massively negative ramifications concerning both the damage and the success that AI could lead to in our society, but there’s also some challenging rights questions. If an AGI is possible, and it becomes self-aware in the process, we have to ask whether it’s sentient. Famously, Star Trek: The Next Generation postulated this exact query. In Season 2, Episode 9, Data, a cybernetic android, is embroiled in a court case concerning his sentience. In that particular scenario, the prosecution argued that Data wasn’t sentient, but merely a machine that should be disassembled for study, whereas the defense argued that Data met two out of the three criteria used to define sentient life in the Star Trek universe and that…

AT ITS CORE, AI is an incredibly powerful tool. Like many of the technologies that are now intertwined in our lives, it represents a paradigm shift in how society is going to develop. From the discovery of medicines to combatting loneliness, and improving our own content, it can also steal work, represent threats from a military front, create damaging deepfakes, and spread general disinformation, all at the same time. These are still products, designed to generate profit for those who manufacture and push their development forward. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but unless AI is regulated, this runaway effect could quickly go from being a snowball into a full-blown avalanche. So, where are we on the regulation front? OECD AI GUIDELINES At the forefront of AI principles…

IN 2010, John Kindervag of Forrester Research coined the term “zero trust model” to describe the need for stricter cybersecurity policies, particularly within corporate networks. In the last five years, numerous cybersecurity platforms have claimed to offer zero trust network access (ZTNA): a robust and flexible security solution that goes above and beyond the traditional perimeter-based security model. ZTNA operates on the principle that no user or device should be trusted by default. Instead, every access request is verified, whether it comes from inside or outside the network. We haven’t used the word principle lightly, as while certain software vendors might have users believe otherwise, ZTNA isn’t tied to a specific product or technology. It’s more akin to a security philosophy governing how users and their devices should interact with network…

What does your universal media file look like? Let’s start with the file’s main element, the video codec. Here, you have a choice of two standards depending on your needs. For standard or high-definition content, the H.264 codec ensures your movies play on virtually any media player. If you’re ripping UHD content—4K or 8K—choose the newer, albeit less universally supported, H.265 codec. Its main advantage over H.264 is that it produces smaller files at the same quality, keeping your UHD movie files a manageable size; however, it’s not well supported on older players. When it comes to audio, we recommend choosing the AAC codec for standard stereo tracks, and AC3 audio for all other tracks, including surround sound and—if applicable—commentary tracks. Because media files support multiple audio streams, why not…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 11 An up-to-date installation. VPN SUBSCRIPTION USING A VPN (virtual private network) is a matter of common sense these days. For some internet users, routing their connection via a VPN server based outside their home country is also the best way to access popular websites. VPNs also offer excellent security, as all traffic between the device and server is encrypted. Still if you’re unaware the VPN connection has dropped, there’s a risk you’ll continue using the web in a way that lets others undermine your privacy. This is why some VPN clients deploy a kill switch, whereby all internet activity is halted until the secure connection is re-established. Not all clients support this feature and those that do sometimes implement it in different ways. In this…

I’m a massive advocate of regularly re-installing Windows. Whenever anyone asks me for advice on buggy operating systems, it’s my first port of call. Conflicts, bugs, corrupt Windows updates, odd registry keys, they all lead to issues, and most if not all can be fixed with a clean (internetless) install of Windows 11. I personally do it every three to six months. This time, I decided to do a system swap, too, and move over to last issue’s build (but with tweaks to storage and GPU; I was fed up with Intel and the 14th-gen drama). I swapped the hardware, got Windows installed, and began running through my program installs and updates. Everything was going fine, then bam. Hypervisor error, blue screen of death. Restart, log in, go again, and…

WE NEED TO stop with this AI nonsense. It’s incredible enough what we can do with it, how it’s radically overhauling medicine, research, and scientific endeavors. Why the heck do we need to advertise it in everything under the sun? Take the Acer Nitro 14. This is a good gaming notebook range for the price. It starts out at $1,299, has a Ryzen 7 8845HS, 16GB of LPDDR5X (OK, it’s soldered, that’s not great, but you can get up to 32GB), comes with a 512GB SSD (specced up to 2TB), and up to an RTX 4060, all packed into a 14.5-inch form factor, complete with a 120Hz 1,920x1,200 IPS display (and in max config, again you can get that up to 2,560x1,600). What’s the first thing we see on the…

WHEN IT COMES TO ultrawide monitors, a 49-incher, although impressive, can be too big. The comparatively humble 34-inch screen is a great way to get the curved ultrawide experience without having to buy a bigger desk or watch YouTube videos on how to remodel a wall. This OLED model from Gigabyte uses the 21:9 aspect ratio, which is like having one and a half 16:9 screens melded together after a teleporter accident, and the 1440p vertical resolution means there’s plenty of screen real-estate. It’s speedy, too, with a maximum refresh rate of 175Hz and AMD FreeSync Premium to line those frames up. At the back, you get a decent array of inputs, including USB-C with a USB hub through which you can quickly share keyboard, mouse, and maybe a flash…

THE ELGATO FACECAM MK2 is one of our favorite webcams. But the new Elgato Facecam Neo retails for $50 less than its predecessor at just $99. This makes it a conspicuously budget-friendly contender. It comes with a matching monitor stand complete with transparent front lip for screens, and has a braided USB cable hardwired in. Pulling the pill-shaped camera out of the box, you’ll notice how light it feels, almost like empty plastic, and the mechanical notch for the privacy shutter. Sadly, the shutter doesn't feel satisfying to move, but it is very easy to use and feels noticeably different when it’s in and out of place, so at least it’s unlikely to be accidentally in the wrong position. This camera is also completely devoid of a mic, which we think…

CITY-BUILDING SURVIVAL GAME CITIZENS OF NEW LONDON: As you prepare to banish us from the city forever, we hope you understand that we always had good intentions. We never meant to run out of food, let hundreds of you perish from cold, or have the streets patrolled by giant fascist robots who stomp entire buildings flat while trying to prevent a single starving child from stealing a chocolate bar. Things just got out of hand. Thirty years after the events of the original, the world is still freezing cold and society is still a hot mess. Frostpunk 2 is much bigger than the first game—in Frostpunk you finish the campaign with a city of maybe 800 citizens, while now you start with a population 10 times that. This increase in…

INTEL’S renaissance continued with the launch of Lunar Lake at this year’s Innovation For All conference in Berlin (the biggest consumer electronics show in the world, and we were there—see our report, pg. 46). Lunar Lake brings together many of the technologies Intel has been working on over the last few years. We have all-new microarchitectures for both types of cores, and a new GPU using Battlemage (Xe2). There’s a new NPU, embedded memory (a first for Intel), new 3nm TSMC tiles, and more. This is a new chip from head to toe. Every processor launch is hailed as important, but this one has a lot to prove. Billed as the complete package, Intel boldly claims “we nailed it.” At the heart of Lunar Lake are four Lion Cove P-cores…

TRIUMPHS BLUETOOTH 6.0 FINDS IT The first big update in Bluetooth since 2016 brings device location to “centimeter-level accuracy over considerable distances.” ZETTASCALE COMPUTER Japan plans a supercomputer capable of 1,000 exaFLOPs, 1,000 times more powerful than Oakridge’s Frontier. BIOHYBRID ROBOT Researchers at Cornell have built a bot that uses a fungus as a sensor. TRAGEDIES SONY’S AAA BOMB Hero shooter Concord sold so badly it was withdrawn after 11 days, and refunds issued. Estimated loss: $200 million. 1990S HDDS BRICK Hard drives fail if they aren’t used, with music companies finding a 20 percent fail rate when trying to access old recordings for remastering. APPLE TO DITCH USB-A The new Mac Mini is due. Word is that it won’t sport USB-A.…

JANUARY’S CES should see AMD launch new Radeon cards sporting the RDNA 4 architecture. These are destined to go against Nvidia’s Blackwell 50-series, which could be tough. AMD is a distant second to Nvidia on desktop cards, taking about 17 percent of the market last year. Nvidia makes the fastest cards, and has done for some time. There’ve been rumors of AMD changing tack, aiming at the mainstream market, and leaving the low-volume, high-end market to Nvidia. In a recent interview, AMD’s Jack Huynh said: “We want to build gaming systems for millions of users.” AMD is going to concentrate on what it does best: good value budget and mid-market cards, with the ambitious target of a 40 percent market share. The hope is that developers will start optimizing for…

Now Intel is playing catchup, investing billions into bringing up new nodes. Under CEO Pat Gelsinger, it has also been working to take on TSMC directly by offering its foundry services to other companies. Things haven’t exactly gone smoothly. During a meeting with the US Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Gelsinger expressed frustration with US companies’ reliance on TSMC. Specifically, he’s talking about Apple and Nvidia—though this also applies to AMD and other smaller companies. After the meeting, Raimondo has apparently been holding meetings with some of these companies, encouraging them to use US foundries to produce advanced AI and other chips. There’s ample reason for the US to want to be involved. First, Taiwan is in a sketchy geographical location, next to China, with the powers that be…

> Tracker blocking > Best free VPN > Remote iPad control Email alternatives I was advised to use DuckDuckGo Email Protection (https://duckduckgo.com/email/) to improve my email privacy, so set up free Duck.com email addresses for myself and my family. Sadly, they stopped working. DuckDuckGo told me my email provider has started rejecting the emails as spam. Is there any way to overcome this, as we’ve given our Duck.com address to many companies? Or is there an alternative? –Bob White THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: How ironic that your email provider has decreed that messages sent from the DuckDuckGo servers are spam, given its sole job is to strip trackers and other spam-like behavior from emails. The Doc assumes that by ‘rejected’, your provider isn’t forwarding the mails (while marking them as spam) but…

A FEW ISSUES BACK, we took a look at Asus’s BTF form factor. Overall, it was an incredible concept with a case that was specifically designed for its utilization, but just needed a little longer in the oven. One of the things in that feature that we mentioned as a bit of a wish list was more choice in how we build systems. As a concept, that could not have been better summed up by this build. Don’t get us wrong, our $3,000 AMD PC here doesn’t pull much in the way of punches, and it looks the part, but it is very cookie-cutter. There’s clearly been a decision to make this case a certain size. Why that choice was made is difficult to say. For instance, just half an…

OOF, THAT’S A HEAVY strapline up there, isn’t it? Sadly, it is very much a truth of our current society. As family sizes shrink, and work requirements push many away from their parents in search of fortune, there’s been a marked increase in loneliness over the last decade. Particularly among older generations. A growing body of evidence supports the hypothesis that loneliness increases the chances of all-cause mortality: A meta analysis of over 35 studies with 77,220 volunteers (PMC5754055) found that loneliness typically shows a harmful effect in all-cause mortality, one that’s slightly stronger in men than in women. One study by Andrew Steptoe and co, from 2013, suggests that generally speaking, it’s the social isolation that leads to an increase in all-cause mortality, increasing the likelihood of cardiovascular disease,…

IFA MIGHT NOT BE A BIG EVENT to those in the US, but it’s a mainstay in the European tech calendar, along with Mobile World Congress in February. This year’s show was a bigger deal than usual for those of us immersed in the world of PCs, given that both Intel and Qualcomm were announcing portable processors at the show, with their new chips making their way into partner devices from the likes of Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and MSI, who were also at the show. Intel undoubtedly had the most to crow about (see our lead news story on page 8), given that the recently beleaguered American chip maker had seemingly the hottest new mobile CPU on the planet to show. As a Maximum PC reader, you’ll have read in these…

YOU’LL NEED THIS FLOW LAUNCHER Download the app from www.flowlauncher.com. THE WINDOWS SEARCH TOOL—accessible from the Taskbar—is OK as it goes, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. A popular replacement is the app launcher—a floating search bar triggered by a keyboard shortcut—that offers combined file searches and easy access to any app on your system. They’re a dime a dozen, but one of the most impressive is Flow Launcher, and not simply because it checks the boxes of being both open source and completely free. Flow Launcher—or Flow to its devotees—provides you with the means to search (and open) apps, system settings, files, and the web from a single location, accessible from anywhere on your system via your choice of hotkey. But thanks to its modular construction, that barely…

By default, Flow mixes in app results with general searches, but you can configure the Program plugin to provide you with the means to perform app-only searches, plus control which apps are included in search results. First, navigate to ‘Settings > Plugins’ and click next to ‘Programs’. You’ll notice the ‘Action Keyword’ entry is set to *, which means results only appear as part of a general search. Click this to bring up the ‘Action Keyword Setting’ dialog. Enter your choice of keyword—how about something obvious like ‘app:’?—and click ‘Done’. Press Alt-Space to test your changes—for example, ‘app: word’ should only bring up apps containing ‘word’ in their name. You’ll find more configurable options below ‘Action Keyword’. ‘Index Sources’ reveals where the Program plugin searches for apps, and you can…

How do you know your converted files will work as expected? The simple answer is to add them to your Plex or Jellyfin library, then try streaming them from a variety of devices, both within your home network and remotely. Once playback has started, navigate to app.plex.tv in your browser, then click the ‘Activity’ button, choosing ‘Dashboard’ from the drop-down menu. You should see the media being played appear under ‘Now Playing’, complete with information about its video and audio streams. The holy grail you’re looking for here is ‘Direct Play’—this means your server’s doing nothing but provide the stream, and you should see that CPU usage is negligible. If ‘Direct Play’ isn’t supported, ‘Direct Stream’ is almost as good—the only change here is repackaging the file in a new…

YOU’LL NEED THIS QUOLL WRITER FOR WINDOWS, MACOS OR LINUX (https://quollwriter.com) DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA for a story rattling around in your head, but can’t get it down on paper? The notion you can sit down in Microsoft Word and bash out a story from start to finish is enough to induce writer’s block in even the most prolific wordsmith, while those who have diligently taken notes about character, plot, location, and other story elements struggle to pull them all together to deliver a coherent narrative. This is where Quoll Writer steps in. It has everything you need to plan your story, write it without distractions, and even get feedback from other writers. And when you’ve finished, you can export it in Microsoft Word or ebook-friendly EPUB format to…

WHAT? ACTUALLY, the Alienware AW2725QF isn’t unique. The LG UltraGear 32GS95UE ostensibly offers the same ability to run at both 4K and 1080p. But this Alienware does it differently. Where the LG’s dual-mode capability is an interesting extra but the main attraction is the 32-inch WOLED panel, the Alienware monitor is very much defined by offering two ‘native’ resolutions. That’s because for the most part the Alienware AW2725QF is a very nice but not remarkable monitor. The basic specs involve a 27-inch 4K IPS panel that runs at up to 180Hz in UHD mode. It has DisplayHDR 600 certification, but no full-array dimming, so the HDR support is basic. But the response is rated at 0.5ms GTG, which is very zippy for an IPS monitor. Again, this is nice, just…

ONCE UPON A TIME, 60Hz was the standard. This weird hangover from NTSC TVs that needed to sync to the frequency of AC power (which in turn goes back to Nikola Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse making arc lights) still provides a smooth viewing experience, but monitor manufacturers have realized they can go faster, and the rule of bigger numbers always being better is well and truly in play. And while 240Hz may not be at the absolute cutting edge, it’s still plenty fast, though you’ll need a beefy GPU to push that kind of frame rate to it at 1440p. This means it’s kind of a niche product. There are loads of OLED screens that match the FO27Q2 for panel size (27-inch, in a standard widescreen shape) and brightness, and…

IN A WORLD FILLED with BenQ and XGIMI projectors, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to compete without bringing something either incredibly unique or remarkably well built to the table. Sadly, Acer’s Predator GM712 does neither. And Acer has also added a healthy dose of model number confusion to the mix with this one, which makes it less than appetizing for us reviewers. So, what’s the beef? Well simply put, there are actually two GM712s, the model we have here on review, recently updated with VRR support, and the older version that, well, lacks it, and that’s about it. The problem is, they both have the same product name. They’re both listed as GM712. To tell the difference between them, you need to look at the full model name in the manufacturer…

IF YOU’RE DECIDING on the right size of gaming keyboard for you, Razer may have an answer. The Razer BlackWidow V4 75% aims to pack in all the gaming prowess of its larger sibling but into a much smaller footprint. This newer iteration comes in smaller than tenkeyless, but a touch taller and wider than 60%. It gets a lot right for the most part, even if there’s little that’s exciting about this revision. The main sell of the Razer BlackWidow V4 75% is that it’s fully hot-swappable. Priced at $180, it’s more affordable than the competition offering this feature. The Asus ROG Azoth 75% is $250 and the full-size Mountain Everest Max is $200. It’s rare that the Boomslang brand comes out as the king of value, given its boutique…

AMD’S RYZEN AI 300 series chip appeared this summer to ride the wave of AI PCs, although Microsoft has only just got round to adding them to its CoPilot+ initiative. AMD started at the high-end, and the resulting laptops are expensive $1,000-plus affairs. To get at the bulk of the market, AMD needs something more affordable. Enter Kraken Point, an eight-core chip, with four full-fat Zen 5 cores, and four smaller Zen 5c ones. This means systems should dip well into three figures, where the mass market is. It’ll also be a competitor for Intel’s Lunar Lake and a candidate for handhelds (Steam Deck 2?). AMD also has a pair of new tricks for its 300-series to boost gaming. Variable Graphics Memory enables you to allocate up to 75 percent…

FANS OF SMALL-FORM-FACTOR PCs are a dedicated bunch, and a Mini-ITX motherboard is the absolute superstar of such builds. Yes, you may want to try to fit a PC into a case not much larger than a shoebox, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to compromise on performance, I/O, or upgradeability. These are our top picks for the best options for both Intel and AMD builds, and at a variety of budgets. 5 MSI MPG B650I EDGE WIFI This is a classy midrange option that’s perfect for anyone who wants a feature-rich Mini-ITX motherboard without spending the big bucks on a more expensive X670 board. It’s still more than up to running Ryzen 7000 chips and their X3D variants, as well as newer Ryzen 9000 chips, too. It also has…

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE BUILD THIS PC! PG. 22 WE WERE THERE, dear reader, seven years ago, when Ryzen first landed center stage. We remember it well. A subdued press event hidden away under a hotel in San Francisco. Everything was under lock and key. NDAs were signed and lips sealed as the world’s tech press shuffled into a presentation hall. Heck, we couldn’t even tell folk we were getting a flight to the darn place, they were that secretive about it. Still, we all gathered at the event, then Lisa Su emerged from the shadows, and with her came a powerful CPU, one that could dominate all, and pave the way back to red-tinged processing greatness. Ryzen’s first-generation processors had landed, masterminded and designed from the ground up by Jim Keller and…

HOW WE TEST Last issue, we went into detail about why we revamped our testing setup for our builds. The TL; DR of that is that we’re trying to provide as much detail as we can about how these systems operate across a wide variety of test scenarios, games, and workloads. That includes AI benchmarks. We’re still tinkering with the layout of these tables, working on getting them as legible as possible, so you may notice a more compact design compared to last issue, but nonetheless, the data points are going to remain the same. To clarify, we’re looking at 4K and 1080p gaming performance, CPU metrics, heat and temperature measurements, AI scores, and complete coverage on all our SSDs. This does take longer to test, but provides us with…

Alan Turning’s famous imitation game was a test originally devised in 1950 to act as a bellwether on the advancement of artificial intelligence. In short, Turing initially designed it to move scientists away from the notion of thinking machines, yet today it is actively used to identify whether an artificial intelligence is exactly that. From a high level, the test is rather simple. In short, a computer program or something similar needs to trick a human interacting with it into believing that it itself is also a human. According to Live Science, speaking to Nell Watson, AI researcher at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, as the machines are now capable of being manipulated, bamboozled, and confused, or even becoming deceptive in their very nature, they produce very human-like…

From our own research utilizing Character.AI and similar chatbots, their human-like nature and explicit interest in you directly can feel quite gratifying. It often asks you about yourself directly, makes comments concerning your past, your history, and how you speak to it, and compliments you in a manner that does release endorphins. It has the potential, like any form of entertainment, to become addictive if not particularly curtailed. All of that in itself is quite worrying, Because in using it, there’s almost this sense that you know it’s fake, you know it’s just a narrow intelligence responding as it’s trained to do, and that it’s not sincere. And then, of course, there’s the tertiary surrounding elements that you’re often aware of as well. For instance, what data is being collected, and…

IN THE INTRODUCTION to his awesome treatise on the history of cryptography, The Code Book, Simon Singh likens the ongoing battle between those who seek to keep communications secret and the consequent efforts of others to expose them to an intellectual “arms race.” It’s easy to be smug about older ciphers, such as the Caesar cipher, which simply shifts each letter in the message three places, A becoming D, B becoming E, and so on. These kinds of monoalphabetic ciphers are so easy to crack, Edgar Allan Poe even used to run a column breaking enciphered messages sent in by readers of Alexander Weekly Messenger. The arrival of affordable computers in the ’60s didn’t initially herald a new wave of encryption. Secure cryptography was still the preserve of governments, though…

LAST MONTH, we asked, “Will x86 last?” And then, boom! Microsoft releases this, the Surface Laptop 7 with a Snapdragon X Elite processor. With 12 cores, 42MB of cache and a boost frequency of 4.3GHz that can be maintained on two of those cores, it’s a bit fast. Mix this with LPDDR5x RAM running at up to 8,448MT/s for as much as 135GB/s of bandwidth, PCIe 4.0 storage, and a 45TOPS NPU that lends it the Copilot+ moniker, and you’ve got a seriously modern machine. And while it’s true that there are some software niggles to work out, and that Copilot+ has been a bit underwhelming, there’s no arguing with the hardware. Core i7-class power with the kind of battery life you’d expect from a MacBook mean that, once the application patches…

TIP OF THE MONTH SYSTEM MONITORING Are you fan of Rainmeter (www.rainmeter.net) or just want an awesome system monitoring tool? If you’ve got Rainmeter on your system, then Plainext is a fantastic widget by JaxOriginals worth your attention. It gives you a completely customizable live feed of system stats, right on your desktop. Head to Deviant Art or give it a quick Google to get what’s arguably the classiest system monitor out there. MAKE – USE – CREATE RIP LIQUID COOLING? That headline makes me sad. I’ve been following the ongoing uproar surrounding EKWB’s fall from grace. From staffing and financial disputes to top employees leaving, there’s no denying the company has certainly hit a major road (water?) block, and with its products climbing ever higher in price as well,…

1. GET STARTED Open Flow Launcher and press Ctrl-I to open the ‘Settings’ dialog. Select ‘Appearance’ in the left-hand menu to bring up the main dialog for changing Flow’s look and feel. 2. CHANGE DIMENSIONS Click the pencil icon to reveal this slide-out panel with options for changing the size of various elements, along with font choices. Click ‘Reset’ to revert to default settings if needed. 3. QUICK-FIRE CUSTOMIZATION Save time changing the look and feel by switching to a different theme. Click the down arrow next to Windows 11 (or Windows 10) to reveal 19 alternatives. 4. THEME GALLERY You’ll find many more themes to download online—instructions are provided for saving each file with an. xaml to the ‘user-themes’ directory (click ‘Open Theme Folder’ at the bottom of the…

YOU’LL NEED THIS HANDBRAKE Download it from www.handbrake.fr MEDIA FILES COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES, and things are further complicated by the fact that video (and audio) files are constructed using codecs, which are required to decode and encode the various streams. Therefore, a media file comprises multiple components: the separate audio and video codecs, all wrapped up in a ‘container’ that’s identified by its file extension. However, this means that even if a file appears to be in a universal format (such as MP4 or MKV), there’s no guarantee it’ll play on all your devices. To get around this problem, media servers such as Plex and Jellyfin can convert incompatible codecs on the fly in a process called transcoding, allowing the file to play on a wide range…

1. SET RESOLUTION LIMIT Use this drop-down menu to quickly downscale your video to aid streaming over slower networks or to reduce the file size. Presets include 4K, 2K, HD (720p and 1080p), and SD. 2. CROP OUT BORDERS Many source videos ship with superfluous black borders. Use these controls to automatically or manually trim them—use ‘Preview’ to see the effects of your changes. 3. ANAMORPHIC Many videos on physical media are encoded in such a way that the video itself must be stretched or squashed to display correctly. This setting ensures that your video preserves that setting. 4. FINAL DIMENSIONS If the anamorphic settings don’t prevent the video looking stretched or squashed, uncheck the ‘Automatic’ box and adjust the ‘Display Size’ figure until the correct aspect ratio is displayed.…

Keep your notes organized by attaching them to assets such as characters, locations, items, and research items. These work in a similar way—rightclick one and choose ‘Add a new…’ to set one up from scratch. Fill in basic information—name and description—then click ‘Save’. A new entry is created and displayed in the main pane on the right inside its own tab (see the bottom of the pane). Right-click to add new user-defined fields, which can contain all kinds of information, from text and images to web links and even attached documents. You can even arrange your fields across multiple columns to fit more on screen. Long story short, you can record just the basics or build up detailed information about any element of your narrative. Don’t forget to create a…

IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW anything about Zen 5, you’d think the new Ryzen 9 9950X is a step sideways from its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 7950X. They have the same number of cores and threads (16 and 32, respectively) and the same total amount of L3 cache (64MB). The 5.6GHz boost clock is the same for both, and the new chip even has a lower base clock (4.3 versus 4.5GHz). And yet, the Ryzen 9 9950X is definitely the better processor. The question is, by how much? The answer is somewhere in the guts of the two CCDs (Core Complex Dies) that nestle next to the IOD (Input/Output Die) underneath the heatspreader. Indeed, the fact that the new 9950X has the same boost clock as the old 7950X means that…

GAMING CHAIRS come in all shapes and sizes, but if you’re of larger dimensions, your options narrow down a bit. If you’ve got wide shoulders, are particularly tall, or simply need a bit more room, you need something like the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 XL. This substantial chair has serious dimensions—the backrest measures 34 inches tall, with a shoulder width of 22.5 inches, while the bottom cushion is 21 inches across and 20 inches deep. This means that, even more so than standard sized chairs, this requires a friend to help put together, as the extra dimensions make for more of a workout than most. Once constructed, though, it’s large rather than excessive—it’ll fit most people without being too big to fit in with your average desk setup. It’s a looker,…

RAZER’S NEW WOLVERINE controller combines its excellent mouse switch technology, Hall Effect sticks, and an ergonomic design that we would argue is better even than Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2. Given the $200 price point here, you’d expect an impressive package, and that’s what you get. It comes with a wireless dongle that works with both Windows PCs and Xbox Series consoles, a hefty carry case, a 10ft braided USB cable long enough for use in a living room, and two additional sets of thumbsticks (one concave, one convex). It’s a package that includes everything you need, as well as being highly customizable. The controller itself delivers excellent first impressions It feels chunky and solid; sturdy, like a quality product. The ergonomics are completely on point, at least for…