Maximum PC July 2019

WE’RE USED TO BUILDING PCs here at Maximum PC. It’s what we do. We often take it for granted. In our defense, we piece together at least one machine every month, and sometimes there can be a couple of other rigs needed as well, which means that over a year, we can easily hit 20 builds. And as with anything you do a lot, there are numerous techniques, corrections, and nuanced changes that we instinctively do without really thinking about them. This issue, we attempt to distill this knowledge down on to the page, so you can benefit from our years of experience, hopefully ensuring that your next build is as smooth as possible, and potentially turning a perfectly capable, if unexciting, system into something you’re truly proud of. Our “Builder’s…

AMD IS 50 YEARS OLD, and to celebrate, it launched a Gold Edition processor signed by CEO Lisa Su, and threw in some free games with its Radeon cards. It has good cause to celebrate, too: Things are looking particularly rosy as it gets ready to hit the market with its Ryzen 3000 series processors, featuring the new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. AMD has produced some outstanding processors in the past (remember when the Athlon hit 1GHz?), but has never managed to fully exploit its innovation in follow-up designs. No longer: Buoyant with cash from selling server chips, AMD has been productive, and it looks like it is finally going to follow one very capable chip design with another, and in short order. At CES 2019, we were treated to an…

GOOGLE HAS JUST HELD its annual I/O event, and the biggest draw was the third beta for Android Q. This adds support for 5G, folding phones (if you can find one), revamped privacy settings, News story timelines, and a Focus Mode to silence notifications, among other frills. One interesting feature is Live caption, which uses AI to turn any audio into text. All the translation is done locally, so Google servers don’t know what you are up to. Yes, there was a fair bit of talk about privacy, too. Google incognito mode is to be expanded to Google Maps, so you can keep your comings and goings private. You’ll also be able to set Google to delete all your activity after three months. Google Duplex got another airing, now heading…

DELL HAS SHIPPED million of systems bundled with its SupportAssist software. This remote support tool is there to fix things, but it has a nasty security flaw that could leave your machine open to attack. The vulnerability is a remote code execution, triggered by a visit to a compromised website, where Java scripts can get to work, and potentially install anything on your machine, from ransomware to mining bots. To work, the hacker needs to be on the same local network, but the wide use of Wi-Fi makes this easier than you might think. Patches have been issued, but not everybody takes notice of endless software patches. The hole was discovered last October, worryingly easily. As ever, we learn about it only when patches are being rolled out. It took Dell…

SAMSUNG’S GALAXY FOLD made it to a few reviewers before it became clear the company had blundered: The screens broke in droves. Launch events were canceled, and deliveries halted. Customers are now being asked to opt in to keep their orders active. The phone is being “enhanced,” which presumably means being fixed. It’s a pity, because when it worked, it worked well. There are no clues as to when the phone will reappear. What went wrong is unclear, but iFixit posted a teardown of a Galaxy Fold, and called it “alarmingly fragile.” This didn’t go down well at Samsung, which applied pressure in the right places to get the article pulled. Apparently, the screen is delicate, and gaps in the casing allow dirt to get underneath, causing it to crack when…

TRIUMPHS MOST POWERFUL LASER 10 billion million watts, and able to vaporize matter: part of the International Extreme Light Infrastructure, 10 times the quoted power of the Death Star. DETAILED UNIVERSE PIC 7,500 Hubble images have been stitched together to make a pic that includes 265,000 galaxies. SUPER SUPERCOMPUTER Oak Ridge Lab to house Frontier, 50 times faster than the current top machines, at 1.5 exaflops. TRAGEDIES WHATSAPP SPIES ON YOU Hackers got into the app just by calling your phone—you didn’t even need to respond. ANOTHER BITC OIN HEIST Binance was hit by hackers who got away with 7,000 coins worth $41 million from its hot wallet. DRAGON II EXPLODES Smoke was visible for miles, but it took a while for SpaceX to come clean. A capsule was completely destroyed on the launch pad during testing.…