Maximum PC April 2022

WHEN I JOINED Maximum PC last month, my immediate concerns were meeting the team, getting stuck in to our publishing systems, and, of course, getting a magazine out four weeks later (quite important, that last one). By virtue of the fact that my face still appears above, I can confidently say: Mission Accomplished. However, little did I know that I was being eased in gently for a much bigger task this month: tackling the mountain of equipment that had built up at Maximum PC towers. No one had warned me that we were on the verge of a PC peripheral-based avalanche so big, it would only be matched by the ensuing mountain of HR paperwork if it ever fell on anyone. Ever the resourceful editor though, I thought about how I…

EVERY YEAR, the big-wigs at Intel have a meeting with major investors to keep them up to date. There’s often plenty of stuff to interest consumers, but this year’s Investor Day proved to be particularly tasty. For starters, Raptor Lake, Intel’s 13th generation processor, had its first public demonstration and we also got some solid specs to chew over. Raptor Lake follows the same hybrid design as Alder Lake, but with up to 24 cores in all—eight performance and 16 efficiency cores, for a total of 32 threads. It will be socket-compatible with Alder Lake, so we won’t all have to invest in DDR5 memory at once. Intel claims Raptor Lake will offer a “double-digit” performance boost for single-thread operations, and more for multi-threaded applications. The top clock rate is expected to…

GRAB THEM IF YOU CAN, because Crucial Ballistix memory modules have reached the end of the line. Ballistix has long been a favorite of modders, overclockers, and builders of awesome gaming rigs, but now the entire range has been axed, explaining why we’ve seen no announcements on DDR5 kit to date. Crucial is a consumer brand of Micron Technology, one of the big three with Samsung and Hynix. Why Micron pulled the plug isn’t clear, although its statement could give us a clue: “JEDEC standard DDR5 memory provides mainstream gamers with DDR5-enabled computers with better high-speed performance, data transfers, and bandwidth than previously available with Crucial Ballistix memory”. It seems that with modern manufacturing methods, pretty much every chip is a good one, and enthusiast memory modules aren’t a big…

WHEN I JOINED Maximum PC last month, my immediate concerns were meeting the team, getting stuck in to our publishing systems, and, of course, getting a magazine out four weeks later (quite important, that last one). By virtue of the fact that my face still appears above, I can confidently say: Mission Accomplished. However, little did I know that I was being eased in gently for a much bigger task this month: tackling the mountain of equipment that had built up at Maximum PC towers. No one had warned me that we were on the verge of a PC peripheral-based avalanche so big, it would only be matched by the ensuing mountain of HR paperwork if it ever fell on anyone. Ever the resourceful editor though, I thought about how I could…

INSTALLING A FRESH copy of Windows 11 Home requires a Microsoft account, and always has done. There is a fiddly and undocumented way to avoid this, but it’s not something your average user is likely to know about. It hasn’t been a popular move and makes Windows the only major OS that requires an online account to use. That isn’t always practical or desired as it makes it a pain to pass on a rig or for third parties to repair it, as you often need to know the account details. Microsoft has decided to add this restriction to Windows 11 Pro, too. Currently, it’s only part of an insider build but it’s planned to go live soon. This hasn’t gone down well with the typical ‘Pro’ user, who expects control…

TRIUMPHS ✔ THE DA VINCI MODE An engineering team has proven that da Vinci’s doodle of an aerial screw helicopter could fly, given modern materials and motors. ✔ BETTER FPS CONTROL The Alt Avatar Motion Controller aims to replace the keyboard in FPS games with customized analog controls and buttons. ✔ TETRACHROMACY IS REAL Scientists say tetrachromacy, a term for those who see many more shades of color, does exist. TRAGEDIES ✗ FAKE QR The FBI has warned of a growth in scam QR codes that direct the unwary to malicious websites. ✗ FACEBOOK’S FALL Meta set an unenviable record for the biggest daily fall in stock price by shedding $232bn due to a poor revenue forecast. ✗ LAWFUL STOP Tesla has recalled 53,822 cars as they’d been programmed to drive through four-way Stop signs if no cars were detected.…