Índex per May 2017 a Maximum PC

a thing or two about a thing or two BACK WHEN I WAS STILL IN SCHOOL, the PC landscape was largely dominated by Intel. There were more than just two players at that point. For example, does anyone remember Cyrix? AMD, too, was a secondary option. Every available alternative was essentially a licensed or reverse engineered version of an Intel CPU. And while some non-Intel CPUs offered unique features, most if not all of them were plagued by underperforming chipsets and lackluster motherboards. Sure, options were plentiful, but they were all third-rate choices, and the market was hungry for more. AMD—seemingly out of nowhere— delivered the equivalent of an atomic explosion to the market when it released the Athlon CPU. With the K6 series processor behind it, offering unexciting performance,…

IF YOU’VE BUILT a lovely new Ryzen or Kaby Lake system, and stuck with Windows 7 or 8, there’s a catch. According to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article, Windows Update now informs you that you have unsupported hardware when you try to update. The solution, naturally, is an upgrade to Windows 10. The cited reason is Microsoft’s “support policy.” We knew this was coming—last year, Microsoft said that Windows 10 would be the only platform to support Kaby Lake, Qualcomm 8996, and AMD Bristol Ridge. Not many people will be running the latest chips alongside older versions of Windows, so adding support would be unprofitable. But cutting off all updates does look mean-spirited. Older versions of Windows run perfectly well on new silicon; there’s no technical problem. This move leaves…

To make everything work properly, AMD reworked many of the building blocks for Zen, including the Infinity Fabric. Zen features a four-core/eight-thread module as its primary building block, combining 512KB of L2 cache per core with a shared 8MB L3 cache, and Ryzen uses two of these modules for the eight-core/16-thread parts. Naples then takes four of those, and puts them in a single package, yielding a 32-core/64-thread part. And in the process, all of the major interfaces are doubled. That gives Naples a massive eight-channel DDR4 memory controller, supporting up to 16 DIMMs, with 128 PCIe Gen3 lanes of external connectivity. The whole package also comes with an integrated SoC (System on a Chip), so there’s no need for external chipsets. One Naples CPU is all that’s required to…

Storage was once the final frontier of PC performance, and the last component to become fully solid state. Today, the latest M.2 SSDs powered by the new NVMe protocol and hooked up via zappy PCIe connections deliver performance that a conventional hard drive wouldn’t recognize. Yet the hard drive isn’t dead. Not when it offers so much capacity for so little money. Meanwhile, the trusty SATA SSD offers a combination of compatibility and speed that’s awfully compelling. Time to find out which storage technology is the best. ROUND 1 Performance You might think the choice between oldschool magnetic drives, conventional SATA SSDs, and the latest M.2 items was a total no-brainer. For the most part, you’d be right. Magnetic drives, with their quaintly spinning platters and delicately servo’ed read heads,…

RYZEN 3 Due to be released during the second half of this year are AMD’s “budget” chips—relatively speaking, of course. Expecting to come in fourcore variants, these low-power processors should be aimed at office workstations and HTPCs, with budget gaming also on the cards. Note: The figures below are entirely speculative. RYZEN 5 It’s hard to miss the fact that Ryzen’s 5 series of processor is aiming its sights directly at the Intel Core i5 market. With its top-end chip topping out at six cores, 12 threads, and a whole whack of cache, this should be a good choice for any mainstream gamer going forward. And with AMD tactically holding these cores back until sufficient OS optimization has occurred, it means those after a competitive gaming chip should see some…

PASS ELECTRICITY through a conductor, and it gets hot. All the little electrons bump into things and transfer energy. This bit of basic physics is useful for an electric fire, but a real annoyance for your silicon, which needs to be kept cool. Back in the day, the only fan you might have had on a computer was in the power supply, blowing hot air out. The Intel 486 was the first processor to need a fan of its own, on the faster versions anyway. The original Pentium could just about manage on passive cooling in its slower incarnations, but was likely to pop under load if you weren’t careful (no universal fail-safe thermal cut-offs back then—if you overheated it, you may well have killed it). Since then, every chip…

A weak point of a bearing is the point of contact between the surface of the drive shaft and the bearing—however clever the design, two surfaces moving at different speeds creates friction, noise, and vibrations. Enter the use of magnetic levitation, which effectively removes any contact. The shaft and fan assembly is held in magnetic suspension by a ring of electromagnets, and rotated by pulses of changing polarity around the ring. No contact means precious little noise and wear. It also enables the fan to rotate accurately around its center of gravity, eliminating vibration. No contact also greatly improves reliability. The idea for maglev bearings has been around since the early 1940s, and was proposed for the high-speed centrifuges used to enrich uranium for the Manhattan Project. However, it took until…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY THE CONCEPT IT’S NOT OFTEN we get to build a machine around a brand new architecture. With the release of AMD’s Ryzen 7 chips, though, that’s exactly what we’ve done. In fact, we’ve done it twice. Turn to page 26, and you’ll discover how to build a nocompromise monster, with the top-end Ryzen at its heart. The problem is, that machine rolls in at over $5,000, which puts it out of range of lots of potential system builders. To be fair, there are some liberties with that machine on the storage and memory front, but even so, what if your pockets are not quite so deep? Can you build a decent Ryzen PC for considerably less? Of course you can, which…

THIS IS REALLY GOOD. Seriously, it’s so good. I’ve never been more impressed with a Bluetooth speaker than I have with the UE Wonderboom. To be fair, this was the first UE device I’ve ever tested, and only having the likes of Bose and Razer to compare it to may have muddied my views a touch as to what’s “good,” but even so, as a connoisseur of fine audio, I like to consider myself pretty well versed in the nuances of treble, bass, and mids. So, what’s so special about the Wonderboom? Well, multiple things: It’s a small apple-shaped object, with 3D positional sound, waterproofing (IPX7), and a no-nonsense setup that just works. Unlike its Boom predecessors, it doesn’t come with any apps, or messing about—simply hit the Bluetooth pairing…

ON THE 28TH ANNIVERSARY of the paper that started it all, Tim Berners-Lee issued a warning against what he sees as the biggest problems facing the web through the World Wide Web Foundation. He highlighted three problems: that we have lost control of our personal data, the rapid distribution of misinformation, and the lack of transparency in political advertising. Smart algorithms mean we are often served carefully targeted information. Articles designed to shock, interest, or appeal to our bias are quickly spread, along with disguised political advertising. What can be done is a tough one. The gathering of our online data has been a fundamental part of the commercial Internet for years. People still share huge amounts of personal data with little thought of consequences. The increasing use of this…

At the beginning of March, NASA made a large library of software programs available to the “public.” The software runs the gamut from code to control propulsion systems to environmental science to boring old project management tools. But what’s with the quotes around “public”? Of the 975 software projects that have been released to the public, only 210 (about 22 percent) are released as open source. Many others are available as a government release, of which many are only available to other government agencies or government contractors. Getting access to one-fifth of what NASA released is better than nothing, but I’m a little thrown off by the decision to advertise the offering of software that only other government officials or contractors can actually look at. First off, I’m a firm…

> OS Choices > SSD Upgrades > BIOS Passwords OS Alternatives Aloha, Doctor. Currently, my PC is running Windows 7 Ultimate, not because I am cheap, but because I refuse to throw money away. Every time I have chosen to buy the latest Microsoft operating system, I end up paying thousands of dollars for other applications I already own because they no longer work properly. Working as a photographer who needs his monitors to stay clean, I passed on Windows 8 because of its Metro user interface (even though the move to a UEFI would have fixed multiple issues with my 24-plus hard drives). Windows 10 looks a lot better, but I just can’t bring myself to buy all of my software over again. So, besides Apple and Linux, are…

FRUSTRATING IS THE WORD with this one. AIO woes cut our enjoyment short midway through the build. Having to install our AIO in the front, because it was half an inch longer than the top mounting tray, was pure frustration, especially as the mobo and fans were already installed. On top of that, the fact that the front is now an exhaust goes against most common airflow conventions. It is possible to rotate the fans, but you need a particular set of hex keys that we didn’t have to hand. To compensate for this lack of positive pressure, we installed all three remaining fans (two in the roof and one in the rear) to draw into the chassis instead. Combined with the blower fan, it should lead to a mostly…

And so, we finally get to look at AMD’s Simultaneous Multithreading. Although Intel was certainly the first to the consumer market with its iteration of simultaneous multithreading—Hyper- Threading—AMD’s SMT operates in much the same way. When most people think of a thread, they imagine it’s not that dissimilar from a core. “It’s the arm that feeds the core most often” is a phrase repeated readily online. In reality, a thread is actually smaller than a process (think Task Manager). In fact, it’s defined as “the smallest sequence of programed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler.” Traditionally, a core processes one thread at a time. However, each instruction within each thread has varying degrees of difficulty, and the time required to calculate each part of that thread can’t…

The standard unit used to define how much noise something makes is the decibel, dB. This unit dates back to the days of the telegraph, and is named in honor of Alexander Graham Bell. As the name also suggests, it is equal to a tenth of a bel, a unit you won’t see used anywhere these days. It was devised to quantify signal loss over the wires. Best known for its use in acoustics, it can also be applied to voltages in electronics, radar, radio field strengths, and more. Most importantly, it is not a linear scale. It’s logarithmic—a ratio of two values: the one you want to measure and a reference value, which, in the case of acoustics, is silence. A logarithmic scale may have suited its original purposes well,…

OH, BITFENIX, you’ve really wowed us in the past with your eccentric designs. And your desire to innovate in a field that’s becoming ever more overcrowded with a barrage of rectangular boxes has inspired us in ways you could only imagine. The Shinobi, the Prodigy, the Phenom, that soft-touch finish, the 230mm intake fans— all fantastic ideas. The Shogun is the latest in BitFenix’s vast arsenal of case designs. A mighty beast of bedlam, it’s more akin to the heritage of the Shinobi and Prodigy than any other chassis in its vast line-up. And, boy, is it a beauty! Although it lacks the soft-touch finish of its predecessors, the curved aluminum base and roof panels add an elegance that truly awes—though more when you see it in person than any…

INTEL RECENTLY REVEALED its newest SSD solution, the Optane SSD DC P4800X, a datacenter drive boasting extreme endurance. The 375GB model will be rated at 12–20PB of writes, or 30 complete drive writes per day for three to five years. But endurance isn’t the only impressive aspect of Optane. The drive will also have exceptional latency, typically less than 10 microseconds up to the 99th percentile. By comparison, Intel’s DC P3700 is a few thousand microseconds under similar workloads. Perhaps most importantly, Intel is promising breakthrough performance at low queue depths—even though most SSDs are rated at QD32, in the real world, no SSD is running anything beyond maybe QD8, with over 95 percent of operations taking place at QD1–4. All of that should prove incredibly useful for servers, but…

you write, we respond > Link Aggregation > VPN Primer > The Next Reality Aggregating Problems Thanks for the great article in the Spring issue about boosting my NAS with link aggregation. And timely, too. I had just run Ethernet cable up to my second floor to serve another PC and a smart TV up there, and was looking into utilizing both ports on my QNAP TS-251, since two or three devices may be accessing it at a time now. I use my NAS for media streaming and computer backups. Since I hadn’t purchased a switch yet, I just picked up the same switch you used (TP-Link SG-2008). I was able to follow your tutorial to the letter. It was spot on, but one tip, though, for anyone using this…

HOPES FOR NINTENDO’S little games console weren’t high in all quarters during its protracted development. It missed key deadlines and was subject to much rumor and speculation, and did we really need a hybrid console and handheld anyway? However, sales have been decidedly brisk—1.5 million were shifted during the first week. Nintendo had planned to ship eight million in the first year, but has revised this to 16 million. That puts it in line to outsell the Wii U in under a year. Nintendo is not the force it once was in consoles, and has been left struggling against the Xbox and PlayStation in recent years. The Wii U didn’t shift in the numbers it needed, and developers’ attention started to wander. The initial game releases for the Switch were…

TRIUMPHS ELECTRIC TATTOO The use of a new electrically conductive tattoo ink means you can embed circuits into your body. FACEZAM WAS A HOAX No, you can’t get somebody’s Facebook profile from a picture of them—a hoax disturbingly close to reality for many. WINDOWS INTO CHINA A version of Win 10 that meets Chinese government approval is ready for market, but the exact modifications remain a mystery. TRAGEDIES GOOGLE AD ROW SPREADS Four big brands have withdrawn non-search ads from Google after their ads were placed next to extremist videos on YouTube. PHONE BATH WARNING A coroner has called for warnings on iPhones after a man electrocuted himself using his phone in the bath. GIF WEAPONIZED A Texas court has classed a gif as a deadly weapon after an epileptic…

HIJACKING It’s 2017, and we have apps that think it’s OK to add a search bar and change your homepage. NOT CLOSING If we close a window, we want it to close. So why do we have to right-click and select “Quit”? PUSH NOTIFICATIONS This site wants to notify you of any updates, do you agree? No thanks, we’re fine. AUTOPLAYING Spot a story, go to a site, and your headphones burst into life as an unrelated video kicks in. STEAM UPDATES Daily patches are necessary, but if you don’t have those games, why does it need to restart? OFFICE 365 NAGS Being constantly nagged to use Office 365 by Win 10 really gets the blood pressure rising. CONTACT BEGGING Social media’s obsession with knowing all our friends’ email addresses…

You can spend—and may already have spent—a lifetime trying to master Windows. Just when you get to grips with one version, out comes another. These days, things are further complicated by the fact that while Windows 10 seems here to stay, it’s now undergoing more frequent changes, with a succession of major updates: Anniversary last year, Creator last month, and another (Windows 10.3, anyone?) slated for the end of the year. How do you possibly keep up? The trick is to realize that the more things change, the more they stay the same, with many of the best tips and tricks that were uncovered during those halcyon days of Windows XP and 7 still relevant now. The problem is, where to find them? That’s what’s driven us to write this…

Is there a better way to cool things down than the positively ancient technology of a fan? There have been plenty of ideas. How about using ionic wind? It has no moving parts at all. It works by creating a flow of air using a thin ionizing anode and a large cathode. MIT and NASA have played with the technology as a possible low-emission replacement for jet engines, but so far nothing much has come of it, due to low thrust densities. There have been some lovely homebrew experiments on PCs that appear to work. The main, and absolutely huge, drawback is the massive voltages required—not something you want inside a PC. Another cooler with no moving parts uses the Peltier or thermoelectric effect. This consists of a sandwich of different…

presents: 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 Nintendo has finally launched its new console, the Switch. But forget playing games for now—it’s time to take a peek at the hardware. Come tear down with us! MAJOR TECH SPECS • Nvidia customized Tegra processor • Built-in 6.2-inch 1280x720 multi-touch LCD screen (capable of 1920x1080 on external display via HDMI) • 32GB of internal storage (up to 2TB additional storage via microSDHC or microSDXC card) • 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, USB Type-C charge port, and 3.5mm audio jack on the console, plus three standard USB ports…

THE CORSAIR ONE I recently had the chance to play with a very special system from Corsair, called the Corsair One—creative, I know. Sure, at first glance, it’s a highperformance gaming PC, packed tightly into a very svelte chassis made from aluminum. But what makes the Corsair One stand out isn’t its design or its performance; the Corsair One is special because it marks a major milestone in Corsair’s history books. If you’ve been around the scene long enough, you’ll know that, originally, Corsair was primarily a DRAM module company. Then it started producing cases, and now it is a popular choice for all sorts of computer accessories. And I have to say, the company has been doing a damn good job in all of its product categories. Save for…

Approximate Price: $697 IT FEELS ODD to say that Intel is currently the best budget option you can invest in, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Intel’s aggressive single-core performance on the Pentium G4600 makes it a competitive gaming chip, capable of hanging with the best of them. And short of going with refurbed or second-hand parts, this system represents the best bang for buck for a casual desktop PC. This issue has seen a few changes, though—amazingly, memory prices haven’t changed this month, but SSD prices have crept up, so we’ve dropped the Z400s Sandisk for an Ultra II; it has a touch less storage, but is no less of a performance king than the Z400s. On top of that, we swapped out the G.Skill memory for…