Table of contents for Spring 2017 in Maximum PC

WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME fussing about with hardware. Tinkering, tweaking, and otherwise trying to squeeze out every last drop of GPU and CPU performance. You can find endless amounts of resources that tell you what you should and shouldn’t do with your hardware. But very little attention is given to the operating system side of the computer, which is unfortunate, because that’s ultimately where the results matter the most. So we’ve gone and done just that. Windows 10 is, without doubt, one of Microsoft’s best releases of Windows. It’s well made, stable, and chock-full of features—some of which you may not actually want or use. Take, for example, Cortana, the smart assistant not unlike Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Echo, or Google Assistant. Sure, it can tell jokes, look up…

THE LAST TW O BIG PLAYERS making 3D TVs— LG and Sony—are to drop their support with this year’s models. The format is dead, for the mass market at least. Lack of content was obvious; there was very little broadcast 3D, and even that has now stopped. Enthusiasm from consumers dropped off sharply, and the TV people’s attention has shifted to HDR and 4K. 3D content will live on, but only through VR. 3D TVs came on the back of 3D movies, which appeared in sporadic waves since the 1950s, each powered by new technology. The first wave lasted just three years, and the revivals fared little better. The current dalliance with 3D movies has at least attracted some big budget titles, but there are signs that this is fading,…

7 MSI AM4+ MOTHERBOARDS With Ryzen launching in the first quarter of 2017, AM4+ mobos are coming thick and fast. 6 RAZER PROJECT VALERIE Although not to everyone’s liking, this triple-screen gaming notebook touts a total resolution of 11520x2160. 5 AMD FREESYNC 2 The revolution of AMD’s variable refresh rate. Similar to G-Sync, AMD is now enforcing standards including low latency and HDR. 4 LG NANO CELL TECHNOLOGY LG is innovating on top of quantum dot by shrinking the pixel size down to a single nanometer to improve viewing angles, even beyond the limits of IPS and VA. 3 AMD VEGA GPU The future’s bright for AMD’s next-gen GPUs. With HBM 2.0 and impressive compression tech, that 4K screen might have a use after all. 2 ASUS ROG SWIFT PG27UQ…

Workstation Power Mixing Memory Jumping to X99 Workstation Power Hi Doctor. My son is a 3D digital design student at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). We purchased a Lenovo P700 system for his design work and, of course, gaming. He uses applications such as Maya, RealFlow, and Adobe’s CC suite. He’s having an issue setting up his hardware to reduce the time it takes to render projects in Maya—they take as long as 30 hours to complete. I don’t think adding more memory will help, and he’s already running dual Xeon processors, with a pretty good graphics card. We looked for ways to better utilize both processors, but can’t figure that out. He also thinks a second graphics card might help, but can’t find documentation supporting his hypothesis. Any ideas…

Spring is in the air, so it’s the perfect time to take a virtual vacuum to your computer. Every year, it’s the same old story: Despite your best intentions, you rapidly lose control of what goes on to your PC, as programs are installed and forgotten, while gigabytes of files— from documents to photos and videos— are copied multiple times to a myriad locations, clogging up your hard drives. The result? A computer that’s slow to start, performs sluggishly, and is approaching the limits of your storage capacity. The changing of the seasons brings the whiff of new life, and again, you resolve to clean out your PC, and see whether you can bring it back to those heady days of its youth, when it performed with a noticeable zip.…

1. CHOOSE FULL SCAN The first time you run Disk Cleanup, you’re prompted to wait while it analyzes selected parts of your system. When the scan completes, you’re shown an amount of disk space you can gain. For a more thorough scan, click the “Clean up system files” button, and wait while the scan repeats. 2. REVIEW SCAN ITEMS You should find Windows has found lots more free space it can clear. Review each item by highlighting it for a description. You can select or unselect boxes to add or remove items to be cleaned—you should see the space gained figure adjust. Ready to clean? Click “OK → Delete Files.” 3. MORE ITEMS TO CLEAN If you have System Restore enabled, you can launch Disk Cleanup again and click “Clean…

Your PC is hopefully noticeably zippier, but there’s still room for improvement. Before we tackle a really deep spring clean, let’s divert our attention for a moment to hard drive management. Unless you’re the most organized person in the world, it’s likely your filing system is a little haphazard. And if you’ve got multiple hard drives, it’s likely you have multiple copies of files, too. First, consult the box below for general advice on what to look for when rooting out and removing duplicates—this could save you from potentially deleting the wrong file or files when you come to clean up. Find Duplicates Quickly CCleaner comes with a built-in file duplicate finder, but it’s not very sophisticated. It matches purely on file name, size, and date last modified. We want…

At last, we reach the final curtain. If your PC still isn’t running as smoothly as you’d like, let us take more drastic steps to bring it under control in this last section on cleaning, diving deep to squeeze out every last possible optimization we can find. We’ll also reveal some final tips for optimizing drive space, to ensure your hard drive doesn’t fill up too quickly going forward. First, you’ll notice that we haven’t included Registry cleaning as part of this feature. Registry cleaners would like you to think they can perform minor miracles when it comes to performance. They can’t. Even if they weren’t justifiably shunned for their ability to delete critical Registry entries along with genuinely redundant ones, the act of simply deleting Registry entries isn’t enough…

You’ll need this LACP-capable NAS Look for two Ethernet ports on the back. Smart switch This needs to support LACP, too. Does your NAS drive come with two Gigabit Ethernet ports? When plugged into a compatible switch, the two ports enable you to combine the two connections using technology called “link aggregation” or “port trunking.” Link aggregation is a catch-all term for various methods of providing a parallel network connection through multiple Ethernet ports. One basic use is to provide a layer of redundancy—if one port fails, the other can still be used. But a more exciting— and practical—use for link aggregation is LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol). LACP increases the throughput of your NAS drive, which means you can speed up the shoveling of data to and from the…

WITH THE VAST MAJORITY of boards, as far as average users are concerned, providing little beyond greater connectivity and expandability, forking out the cash for flashier mobos often makes little to no sense. Performance differentials are almost non-existent, and taking a GTX 1080 and a Core i7-7700 from a $70 B250 mobo all the way up to the $300 kings of Z270 will likely provide practically no difference beyond increased connectivity, better looks, and a flashier UEFI BIOS. Unless you’re on the liquid-nitrogen cooling train, with a full-fledged arsenal of Core i7s beside you, you’re unlikely to see much difference, as the PC ecosphere tends to lend itself more to silicon limits within the processors themselves than anything the motherboards can muster. So, Gigabyte’s Z270X-Ultra Gaming impressed us from the…

It’s very likely end of days for Intel’s CPU strategy as we know it. We don’t mean that in an apocalyptic sense. Intel isn’t about to suffer an existential calamity. But AMD’s Ryzen processor is coming, and we’re confident it’s going to shake things up. That’s the context into which Intel’s Pentium G4600 arrives. Based on the latest Kaby Lake microarchitecture, it’s very much a child of the last five years or so, when Intel ruled on the high seas, across the land, and up in the air. Within that narrative, the fact that Intel has bequeathed the G4600, plus two other new Kaby Lake Pentiums, with Hyper- Threading capability constitutes news. Hyper-Threading is the ability for each CPU core to process two software threads in parallel. And it’s been…

WE HAVE A PENCHANT at Maximum PC for high-quality audio. Although there are some pretty snazzy gaming headsets, they tend to meander well into the $250- plus range for anything close to decent sound reproduction. Turn your head to audiophile offerings without a microphone, however, and you can easily find pairs for under $150 (Audiotechnica’s ATH-M50Xs, for example). For the vast majority, no mic is no problem, but for gamers, lacking a way to communicate with your buddies can be a deal breaker. And for those unwilling to chunk out for a $200 dedicated desktop microphone, there’s not a huge deal of choice. Except, maybe there is. Antlion saw this gap in the market, and jumped in with this fantastic modular microphone. Available in two models, the 4 and the…

PRESS WINDOWS AND G in the latest Windows Creator Update, and you enter the much anticipated Game Mode. As expected, it’s mostly about resource allocation, specifically CPU and GPU resources to the game, getting all processor cores running effectively, and keeping the GPU focused on the game graphics. The emphasis is not so much on performance increases—these are marginal, at 2–5 percent—but to get Win 10 rigs, Xbox One, and the forthcoming Scorpio console to offer a consistent experience. The target standard is 900p to 1080p for Xbox One, and 4K at 60fps for Scorpio. The “Games” section in “Settings” sports the Xbox logo, and here you can configure each game. Win32 support has been confirmed, too, which is welcome. You also have game streaming via Beam, and a new…

FOR YEARS AND YEARS, being a Linux user meant giving up on the idea of playing top-tier games when they’re released. For the most part, that’s still true, but technologies are emerging that will make it easier for developers to distribute games for Linux. Unfortunately, these newfangled technologies don’t solve all of the underlying issues. The first big thing that offers promise is the Vulkan graphics API, the spiritual successor to OpenGL. As an open API, Vulkan has promised a cross-platform API for developers who want to develop for Linux, Windows, Mac, and even mobile devices. (The API also shipped with support for the modern Wayland graphics server.) The API spec was published in early 2016, and hardware released during the year offered support for Vulkan. However, very few games…

Alight spring clean can free up drive space and improve your PC’s performance without involving any hard work or even third-party tools. Everything we feature on these two pages is done using Windows’ own built-in tools, so without further ado, let’s get started. First, check your hard drive is in good working order. The quickest way to force Windows 10 to perform a complete check on your hard drive is to right-click the “Start” button, and choose “Command Prompt (Admin).” Type the following into the command prompt window, then hit Enter: $ chkdisk /f /r c: You’re told the drive can’t be locked (because it’s in use), so press Y, then when you next restart, Windows performs a complete check of your hard drive, attempting to correct any errors it…

Dissatisfied with the results of spring cleaning with Windows’ own tools? Time to go further. In this section, we’ll perform a deeper clean on areas already covered, with the help of free thirdparty tools, which can also reach areas not touched by Windows. As always, caution should be your keyword. While cleaning out gigabytes of data is satisfying, it can lose its allure if you’ve been hasty and discover useful shortcuts, such as the Jump lists of programs, have been removed. Remove Apps Thoroughly Standard program uninstallers tend to be conservative, leaving lots of detritus behind. This can soon mount up, and while you could employ the services of a Registry cleaner, the best time to clean up after a program is when you remove it. Our tool of choice…

Backups of critical files are—of course— important, so any file cleaning needs to bear this in mind. Also, you may have renamed a file without changing its content, so a good duplicate finder utility should not simply match files by their names (which could be disastrous if two completely separate files with the same name become linked together), but also by the file’s properties, too, from its size to the date it was last modified—that’s especially important with digital photos that have been downloaded from different cloud providers, each one naming them differently. And what about the legions of digital photos cluttering up space on your hard drive? It’s not uncommon to take five or more shots to ensure you get one usable one, but what about the rest? You…

Why let programs take more resources than they need? Instead of installing a program on your PC—letting it scatter itself all over your hard drive, and take up valuable space in the Registry—look to see if a portable alternative is available. Portable apps are programs that restrict themselves to a single folder; everything they need to run can be found inside that folder, so not only do you keep them in check (delete the folder, remove the program—completely), you also get to choose where they reside. Portable apps are a particularly good choice when you have Windows installed on a small system drive—such as a 64GB or even 32GB SSD. You can store the apps on another drive, and leave enough space for Windows to run smoothly. Not only that,…

Recovering files is our aim here, but all of this can be avoided with a sensible computing regime. If you care about your data, build in a backup routine. The prevailing wisdom states that you should follow the rule of three (three copies of your data, stored on at least two kinds of media, at least one of which is kept offsite), and it makes sense to get as close to this as you can. Start duplicating your critical files to a cloud backup service such as CrashPlan, and using external media to keep secondary copies of the most important items. Copying them to another partition on the same drive—or another physical drive in the same machine—is not adequate. Move your backup away from your main machine—to a different floor of…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM THE CONCEPT SINCE THE LAUNCH of Intel’s Core series processors, way back in 2009, there’s been one simple rule associated with its mighty lineup of chips: If you’re into gaming, to avoid bottlenecks, you’re going to want to equip yourself with a Core i5, minimum. Four cores are king— any more, and you’re wasting your hardearned dollar; any fewer, and you’re in for a world of frame rate hurt. However, a lot has changed since 2009. And although the incremental processor performance increases Intel has staggered out of the gates since then have been somewhat lackluster, cumulatively they’ve provided us consumers with about a 70–80 percent increase in computational performance. So we got to thinking: As game devs still haven’t managed…

IN THE EARLY NOUGHTIES, an interesting concept arose from our fervent pursuit of more powerful technology: As transistor size shrank, efficiency per watt increased, and die size fell, manufacturers aggressively pushed for smaller and smaller devices. The ITX form factor was developed in 2001 by VIA Technologies as a way of shrinking desktop computers to a more manageable size, and it has since become a staple for enthusiasts looking to build a tiny desk-sitting powerhouse. MSI’s Z270i Gaming Pro Carbon is the first in the latest line of Kaby Lake boards we’ve seen that deals with ITX. And we’ll be honest: Although the on-board support is as good as, if not better than, it has ever been, the rear I/O gives us pause. This isn't limited to MSI, though—Gigabyte, Asus,…

THERE’S LITTLE WE LOVE more than a case that cuts that fine line between sophisticated and garish. Corsair has long been a master of balancing on that knife point, its chassis beautifully comprised of elegant panels shaped in a manner that would put Apple’s design studios to shame. But they’ve always come at a cost. Literally. Most of the high-end cases pass the $100 mark by a mile, with only the Carbide 400C scraping in just under the margin, and anything else relegated to ITX lovers. The Carbide 270R bucks that trend. Coming in at a reasonably affordable $70, it’s the first Corsair case that incorporates the look and feel of the more sophisticated 400C but at a more aggressive price point. The front panel curves down into a smooth,…

I’ve been hearing about AMD’s Zen, now Ryzen, for what feels like forever. The Zen architecture was first mentioned in 2012, and ever since, the repeated refrain of AMD CPU apologists has been “just wait for Zen.” That wait is finally over, and Ryzen is now available. But as we go to print, I still don’t know exactly what AMD’s Ryzen lineup will be in terms of core counts, clock speeds, and pricing. It’s quite the contrast compared to AMD’s open discussion of the Ryzen architectural details, not to mention Intel’s routinely leaked product roadmaps. Here’s what I do know. AMD is planning on a full release of Ryzen processors, all multiplier unlocked. Ryzen uses a quadcore module as its building block, with SMT providing eight threads, similar to Intel’s…

Replacing Fans Core i5 vs. Core i7 OwnCloud Woes Cooler Fans Zak’s piece on his upgrade build had me reading it at least six times to make sure I learned all there was to be learned (“The Ultimate Upgrade,” Feb 2017, pg. 68). There was one confusing part, though: I could not tell if he replaced the very good stock fans on the new NZXT Kraken cooler with Corsair MLs, or if he added them to the inside of the radiator, meaning the radiator would have four fans in push-pull. I can’t tell if the two stock fans are there on the front of the case, or if he discarded them and replaced them with the Corsair MLs. For a new builder, fan placement and control is very confusing. My…

Approximate Price: $662 What a price drop this time around! This issue enlightened us about one key tidbit of information when it comes to system building: In this day and age of supercharged IPC performance, the desire for a more substantial processor on a base system like this is null and void. As long as your GPU has the necessary heft, and you’re buying a modern CPU, you’re not likely to encounter any bottlenecks. This is where the Pentium G4600 comes in. At $90, it’s a walletpleasing $115 cheaper than the Core i5 we recommended in last month’s issue—and, honestly, you won’t lose a lot by jumping ship. And if you’re just looking for a standard office PC, you can strip out the GPU, swap out the SSD for a…

THE CHINESE MINISTRY of Industry and Information has announced the start of a 14-month campaign to target the use of VPNs in China to “clean up” the Internet, and encourage the “healthy” development of the industry. Running a VPN business inside China will now require a state license, and presumably close co-operation with the authorities. President Xi Jinping recently delivered a speech to the World Economic Forum on the benefits of opening up world trade and world borders. The irony is palpable. Details on the new rules are a little vague, but the clear targets are businesses inside China who provide VPNs for its citizens. The firewall that surrounds China has also started blocking VPN sites. Large corporations are unaffected so far. VPNs are popular in China to access otherwise…

THE WORLD OF INTEGRATED GRAPHICS has a long and storied history, most of which can be summed up as: they’re too slow and lacking in functionality. For years, the most “popular” graphics chips have been Intel’s, not because they were fast but because they were ubiquitous. The good news is that Intel started putting more effort into improving graphics when it created HD Graphics, in 2010. The latest iteration is its 600 series, in the new Kaby Lake CPUs, which is largely the same as the 500 series. A huge chunk of the processor is devoted to graphics—roughly one third of the die. But even so, performance isn’t stellar. I ran tests on 15 modern games, and even at low quality settings and 1280x720, less than half were playable. But…

It feels like OLED has been the next big thing in monitor tech for about a decade. It’s been one of those technologies that seems to always be just around the corner, but somehow never arrives. OLED, or Organic Light Emitting Diode, tech has actually been successful on the small scale of smartphone displays for several years. Scaling the technology reliably and affordably for big displays has proven more difficult. However, the major brands in the HDTV market went big on OLED at CES earlier this year. What’s more, the first laptops with full OLED displays have now gone on sale, including the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga and the latest Alienware 13. Strictly speaking, the first OLED PC monitors have also arrived. The Dell UP3017Q delivers an OLED panel in…

1. CHOOSE WHAT TO SCAN CCleaner’s Cleaner component comes with some settings pre-selected. It’s a good idea to review these thoroughly, unselecting those you don’t want to lose, and selecting the settings you’d like to clean. Unsure what files a particular setting might delete? Right-click it and choose “Analyze….” 2. REVIEW ANALYSIS CCleaner performs a limited scan on the chosen setting. To view exactly what it’s found, double-click the summary in the right-hand pane (such as “Microsoft Edge— Download History”), and a list of all files is shown. Right-click files to exclude them from future scans or open the parent folder. 3. CONTINUE CHECKING Scroll down to view all Windows settings— if in doubt, perform an analysis on the specific setting, or unselect it to exclude it from the full…

1. SET SEARCH PARAMETERS Launch AntiDupl, select “Search → Options,” and select “Search rotated and mirror image dupls” if you wish (click “OK”). Now select “Search → Paths.” Click “Add Folder” to add a folder or drive to search—repeat for as many locations as you need. Click “OK.” 2. REVIEW RESULTS Click the play button and wait while folders are searched and compared (click “Background Mode” to minimize to the System Tray). When the scan finishes, AntiDupl lists all found duplicates and similar files. See the main text for advice on what settings to choose for each find. 3. PERFORM CLEANUP As you click a button for each result, it disappears from the list, and the next item comes into view. Work through the list—you can select multiple items at…

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 The world of video game platforms has been changing quickly. Manufacturers have resorted to mid-gen refreshes to keep up with 4K TVs and VR headsets, and here’s the third iteration of the PS4 generation. We may be amateur gamers, but we’re revved up to tear the PlayStation 4 Pro down, professionally. MAJOR TECH SPECS • Eight-core AMD “Jaguar” X86-64 CPU, clocked at 2.1GHz (up from 1.6GHz). • 4.2Tflops AMD Radeon-based graphics. • 8GB GDDR5 RAM and 1GB DRAM. • 1TB removable and upgradable hard drive storage. • 802.11a/b/g/n/ac,…

About six months ago, we put the giant blue box that was Digital Storm’s Aventum 3 desktop to the test. It was a beastly gaming machine, but heavy as hell, and just as expensive. We’re thinking of the Velox as the Aventum’s little brother, and for a little more than half the cost, it performs nearly as well as its elder sibling. A big part of the Aventum’s $8,500 price tag was due to its Hyper-Threaded Core i7- 6950X, which checks in at $1,700. The Velox makes up for skipping on the enthusiastclass CPU route thanks to Intel’s new Kaby Lake processors. Our unit was outfitted with a Core i7-7700K, overclocked to 4.9GHz, one of the highest desktop core clocks we’ve seen on a prebuilt system. While it doesn’t quite…

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST t ime R azer h as unleashed the Kraken, and it’s not the first time we’ve faced it down. Its first goaround, when we reviewed the shiny white Kraken Pro V1 in December 2015, didn’t exactly impress; its bass-above-all-else sound stage was a bit much, and we had trouble with the mic. Can this 7.1 model, which sits alongside the newly-tuned Pro V2, offer us something more palatable? We’ll address the issues we had with the original shortly—let’s begin with the benefits (or not) that the 7.1 offers over the Pro model. The most obvious difference is the lack of a four-pole jack, consigning the 7.1 to USB-based use only. There’s also a bit of added virtual surround technology, Razer’s Chroma LED lighting, a MEMS…

Being my family’s oncall tech support, I’ve run into my fair share of systems compromised by a pile of bloatware, unnecessary toolbars, and viruses. Most of us know the standard system recovery utilities—CCleaner, Malwarebytes, and their ilk—but there’s an even better option, before going nuclear, and reinstalling the OS. Tron is an open-source script that automates the full process of cleaning and disinfecting a Windows system. First, it preps your system, creating a restore point, and running tools and scripts that ensure the rest of the process runs smoothly. Next, it runs cleaning utilities such as CCleaner and BleachBit, followed by de-bloating, ditching OEM bloatware, toolbars, and other pre-installed apps (excluding useful stuff such as Calculator and Paint). Disinfection is handled by Malwarebytes, KVRT, and Sophos, while a series of…

Upgr ade of the Mont h Choosing how to cool your prized processor is always a curious decision. For instance, forking out extra cash for what amounts to a slim 240mm radiator rarely offers any greater advantage over another model, outside of a better designed fan and easier mounting solutions. However, we just can’t get past how fantastic the Kraken X52 is. With a plethora of lighting options, it’s a meeting of minds between the gaming RGB craze that’s been forced upon us and a desire to retain a degree of professionalism that, arguably, all our readers wish to see in their purchases. $150, www.nzxt.com…