Table of contents for March 2018 in Maximum PC

BLOAT IS THE curse of operating systems, because they need to appeal to the masses, rather than cater for individuals. You can’t have a Microsoft engineer sit there and craft you your own custom version of Windows (we know, we’ve asked), so you need to scrape off that additional chaff yourself. We’re not just talking about shaving away the contents of a couple of megabytes of hard drive space, or cleaning up the Start menu. Windows comes with stacks of software that can reduce your machine’s performance or boot time. It comes with stuff that can see what you’re doing. It includes features that are potentially monumentally annoying. So we’ll do away with all of them, plus explain what’s safe to chop, and what isn’t. Doing all this work every time…

Doing Windows your way means only including the applications you absolutely want, using Windows as a base for your operations, and often completely ignoring those apps that Microsoft doggedly protects unwitting users from deleting. We’re not suggesting they’re useless, and sometimes a core Windows app might be the best choice, but that’s for you to decide. While the surface parts of Windows deny their removal, the deeper toolbox doesn’t. Fire up Powershell by right-clicking the “Start” button, and selecting “Windows Powershell (Admin).” Now run the command Get-AppxPackage (capitalization is important in Powershell) to list every core app that Windows has installed. Scroll through—it’s probably quite a long list—until you find the application you’re looking for, and seek out its full name, which is a longer string, including version numbers. Then…

Remember Larrabee, Intel’s last grand plan for graphics domination? That was based on a radical new approach to graphics processing. In simple terms, Intel planned to use its chip-production technology advantage to cram scores of small x86 CPU cores into a single chip, and use brute force to render fast 3D graphics. The idea was to launch consumer graphics cards using Larrabee chips in 2010. That never happened. Turns out, even with the might of Intel’s chip fabs behind the idea, Larrabee was simply going to be too slow. Indeed, it’s an indication of just how hard it is to break into the high-performance 3D rendering market that even Intel majorly misjudged its entry. So, once bitten, twice shy? Not for Intel. Getting into graphics is simply too important, what…

1 Clouded The Future Is We were a little taken aback by the launch of these Star Wars themed GPUs. That said, the choice between a light or dark side variant of the world’s most powerful consumer card is pretty cool, and both shrouds look exceptional, with bespoke green (Jedi) or red (Empire) lighting. 2 Unlimited Power That aside, there is no difference between the collector’s edition and the standard cards. Spec for spec, they’re identical, bar a two-degree difference in maximum operating temperature. 3 The Force Is Strong 4K gaming off a single card is no longer just a pipe dream but a reality. The Titan Xp is no slouch— we’ve recorded it easily smashing 60 frames a second at 4K. And if the Xp’s price is too high?…

TIP OF THE MONTH QUANTUM BENCHMARKING We’ve been toying with new benchmarks for a while, and at the top of the list of potentials for systems and GPUs is Unigine’s Superposition benchmark. One of the most demanding applications we’ve seen so far, it features VR-ready tests, stress tests, and a whole suite of benchmarks, including custom runs, all the way up to 8K. Talk about future-proof! Best of all, it’s free. https://benchmark.unigine.com/superposition MAKE – USE – CREATE 54 Send secure and private messages with RetroShrare 58 How to unlock and overclock Intel’s non-K CPUs 70 Building a sub-$2,000 monochromatic PC— in black and white INVESTING TODAY It’s a difficult time to be someone of my generation. We regularly get a bad rap, and it’s often for our lack of commitment…

To use Retroshare on more than one computer, you need to transfer your profile. First, export it from your PC: Select “Network → Keyring,” right-click your profile entry, and choose “Export/create a new node,” then “Export selected key.” Save the .asc file and transfer it to your new computer. Open Retroshare on the second device, and click “Option → Advanced options,” then “Option → Use existing profile.” Load in your .asc file. This pre-fills the profile name—give your node a name to differentiate it from your main PC, then enter your password, move the mouse about, and click “Go!” By default, each node shares your name, PGP ID, and PGP fingerprint, but they’re assigned unique location IDs. Each node is—by default—isolated from the others, so you can choose who gets…

How much extra performance can you squeeze out of a non-K chip? We’ll use a Core i5-6500, and run some benchmarks to demonstrate. It’s overclocked by 1.1GHz, from 3.2GHz to 4.3GHz, while the RAM is at just over 3,200MHz. First up is Heaven 4.0, a GPU-intensive app that doesn’t show much improvement for that extra 1.1GHz: 50.2fps at stock speeds, and 50.3fps overclocked. Heartbreaking. Things get more encouraging when running CPU-intensive RTS Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, though: 25.8fps at stock, 29.3fps overclocked. Cinebench R15 sees a jump from 524 to 727, while Middle-Earth: Shadow of War jumps from 52fps to 62fps. Result!…

HITLER’S TIME TRAVEL EXEMPTION ACT, as decreed by the website TV Tropes (www.tvtropes.org), states that all fictional attempts by time travelers to murder the Great Dictator will either fail or otherwise be disastrous. This is, in fact, the exact premise upon which Westwood Studio’s 1996 classic game Command and Conquer: Red Alert [Image A] is based. In the alternate history of Red Alert, Einstein decided to turn his genius to creating a time machine, rather than an atom bomb. He travels back to 1924, and kills Hitler with no more than a handshake. With no opposing Germans, the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin begins to roll across Europe, while the Allies desperately try to halt their advance. The game is non-judgemental, and lets you play as either faction. Twenty years…

KODI IS AN EXTREMELY VERSATILE open-source application. It offers a very elegant way to manage all your TV shows, films, and music in one place. Each aspect of Kodi can be changed, from its themes (known as “skins”) to the addition of various plugins, which support extra features, such as YouTube playback. One particularly useful feature concerns Kodi’s video and audio scrapers. These scour the Internet to match your media files to a particular film, TV show, or song. The resulting metadata is then displayed in the application. The Kodi project is dedicated to turning your PC into a home cinema. To this end, the application also supports a number of remotes, such as official touchscreen apps for cell phones, and even game controllers. See http://kodi.wiki/view/Remote_controls for a full list…

WHAT MAKES a “small form factor” system? Surely massive, hulking machines don’t qualify, but is shaving only an inch or two off a standard mid-tower desktop enough to make the cut? That’s the question asked by the Bolt X, the latest iteration of Digital Storm’s “slim and powerful” small form factor design. Measuring 15.5 x 6 x 20 inches, and weighing up to 30lb, the Bolt X is only an inch or two smaller than many mid-tower cases, and massive compared to super-compact systems, such as the Corsair One. We wouldn’t call it small judging solely from the exterior, but things are different once you look inside. The most impressive achievement of the Bolt X’s size is its slimness—at only six inches wide, some finesse is required to fit all…

IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged that a monitor is the best long-term investment you can make for your PC. Or it used to be. Go back a decade, and the greatest flat panel was Dell’s 3007, a 30-inch beast with what was then a monster native resolution of 2560x1600, and a quality IPS panel. It wasn’t cheap. But for the next seven or eight years, little arrived to truly usurp it. Sure, incremental advances were made. But short of spending mega bucks on something really exotic, the 3007 remained a premium experience. That was true until two to three years ago, when the 4K revolution arrived, and suddenly 2560x1600 was old news. Meanwhile, further new features such as adaptive sync, high refresh rates of 120Hz-plus, and HDR tech have…

There’s a laundry list of services that can safely be switched from automatic to manual for a boost at boot time; disabling them altogether is a question of your preferences, or Windows’ ability to hold up. Cut Connected User Services and Telemetry, dmwappushsvc, and Diagnostic Tracking Service to remove Windows’ spying—er, telemetry— tendencies, then Diagnostic Policy Service, Windows Error Reporting Service, and Program Compatibility Assistance Service to do away with a few services that you won’t want bothering you once you’ve started tearing Windows to shreds. Disable Remote Registry just to be a little secure, and Windows Defender Service (and possibly Security Center) if you’re confident in your own malware-fighting methods. A lot of the other possibilities will depend on the specific makeup of your machine. Shut down IP Helper…

AN AMD GRAPHICS CHIP inside an Intel processor? Not in a million years. But that is precisely what Intel recently announced: a whole new product line that combines an Intel CPU with an AMD GPU in a single processor package. More specifically, it contains a quad-core CPU and a high-performance AMD GPU. The new chip is intended to enable the creation of a new generation of thin and light laptops with serious performance. Enough performance to play AAA games, deliver a quality VR performance, and support pro-level content creation. If it seems like an unholy alliance between confirmed enemies, there are not only major upsides for both Intel and AMD—the new chip also represents the logical next step for the PC as a platform in both mobile and desktop forms.…

Putting a CPU and GPU into the same processor package is not a new idea. Intel and AMD have been doing it for years. In fact, they’ve fused the two into the same slice of silicon, not just put them into a shared package, but as yet, neither has created a CPU-GPU product with genuine high-performance credentials, not from a 3D rendering and gaming perspective at least. Part of the reason for that comes down to power consumption and thermals. Combining two high-performance components concentrates power consumption and heat dissipation into a very small space. It also makes for very large chips that can be expensive to produce. But all of that is more a problem that prevents competing at the very highest level. As the latest Xbox One X and…

THERE’S A JOKE that circulates security circles: Android smartphones are really expensive abandoned Linux distributions. It hurts, but it’s true. Android is based on the Linux kernel, making Android (more or less) a form of Linux operating system, aka a distribution. Android smartphone manufacturers tend to bash out a device, build whatever the latest version of Android is, support it for the shortest amount of time they can get away with, then abandon the owners—vulnerable to whatever zero-day attack next raises its ugly head—running for the hills, waving their wads of cash. Take the OnePlus Two. A fine Android phone, but OnePlus dropped support two years after release, just as the Krack vulnerability struck. Tough luck, suckers! This is standard practice in the Android world. But when people are carrying…

BACKGROUND We’ve been waiting patiently at the end of the dock for the Mate 10 Pro to sail in from its Chinese smartphone maker. And we haven’t stood in the cold for nothing—after a warm welcome, this new smartphone is going straight to the teardown table. MAJOR TECH SPECS • Octa-core Kirin 970 and Mali-G72 MP12 GPU • 6.0-inch 1080x2160 (402 ppi) AMOLED display • Dual 20MP and 12MP f/1.6 main camera unit by Leica • 8MP f/2.0 selfie camera • 128GB storage and 6GB RAM, or 64GB storage and 4GB RAM • Android 8.0 Oreo and EMUI 8.0 KEY FINDINGS • Before we deconstruct the Mate 10 Pro, we line it up next to one of its predecessors, the Mate 9, for a quick comparison. At first glance, differences…

As if Retroshare’s existing features weren’t enough, it’s possible to expand it further using plugins. Two are included with the Windows version, but are disabled by default. Navigate to “Preferences → Plugins,” and click “Enable” next to the VoIP.dll plugin to add voice and video chat to Retroshare’s “Network” button; enable FeedReader to set up an RSS feed for your own use or to share via a forum. Once enabled, configure both via their own sections in “Preferences” (in the case of the VoIP plugin, both you and your chat partner need it installed and running to use it). Retroshare comes with a built-in web interface, giving you access to a limited subset of its features through your web browser. Navigate to “Preferences → Webinterface” to enable it. By default,…

ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT THE RASPBERRY PI is that it’s so small and portable. To illustrate that fact while doing something interesting, this tutorial reveals how to configure a Raspberry Pi 3 to run from a car cigarette lighter socket while enabling the driver to collect Wi-Fi location and other data using a USB GPS and an external USB Wi-Fi module [Image A]. We then explain how to map this data using Google Maps. Start off by grabbing the Raspbian Lite image file from www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian. Download and unzip the ZIP file. Ensure that only the image file is extracted. There should only be one file ending in .img at this point. Use Etcher (downloadable from www.etcher.io) to write out the image. Insert the microSD card and open Etcher.…

HDR, OR HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE, photography was enormously popular a couple years ago, then became so ubiquitous that even your cell phone can do it today. The idea is that you shoot three—or sometimes more—photos. One of them is normally exposed, one is overexposed, and the third is underexposed. You do this on a tripod, so they’re identical, then blend them in software, so the mid-tones come from the properly exposed photo, the darks from the underexposed, and the brights from the overexposed one. This makes a higher contrast final image that doesn’t suffer from a lack of detail in dark or bright areas, as can be the case from a single image, thanks to the way the sensors in digital cameras are built. One of the problems with HDR…

CHANGING PRONOUN from the Maximum PC “we” to the personal “I” for a sentence, this machine marks a proud moment. It’s the neatest PC I have ever built and, after only a tiny bit of troubleshooting—one forgotten front panel connector—it ran perfectly. Well, mostly. We’ll come to that. NZXT’s H400i is so well designed it almost generates its own logic; once it’s stripped and clear, an easy process with only a little screwdriver-slinging, it all but invites you to build your PC right. Not that we did exactly. There were missteps—10 minutes fighting to screw in the M.2 SSD after forgetting to add its tiny standoff to the mobo, and placing the milky white case side on a not-so-clean surface—and there are a few things we’d do differently if we…

WAR, IT SEEMS, changes on an annual basis, and sometimes comes full circle. The decision to return to World War II was controversial, but a reboot could help revitalize a series that’s been looking a bit tired, if not lacking in imagination, across its most recent installments. Single-player is treated less as training for multiplayer this time, and benefits hugely from it. Here we have war divided into 45-minute packages, in which huge events are thrown away, and drama is found in the small moments that matter to one or two lives, rather than hundreds. The game’s opening is the D-Day beach landings, yet it’s swiftly dealt with in favor of clearing bunkers. This may be a wise decision, as while the amphibious invasion was a turning point for the…

Cryptocurrency news has been hot of late, thanks in no small part to the skyrocketing prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum, two of the largest cryptocurrencies right now. Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies are also up in value, and given the prices on graphics cards that are supposed to be useful for gaming, some of you will inevitably wonder: Should I get into the mining business? That’s a big, open-ended question, and the answer depends on many factors. We’re not going to try to cover every aspect (because Google is your friend), but we’ll quickly go over the basics of what you would need to get started, and include some rough estimates of how much money you might make when all is said and done…. Read the full article at http://bit.ly/2vDZnEn…

Windows’ recent softening on the Linux shell wasn’t so much controversial as it was surprising; it’s a subtle acknowledgement that many power users prefer the efficiency and depth of the likes of Bash over the sometimes clumsy world of the creaking DOS-derived Windows shell. And it almost happened by accident. Microsoft was working on technology to allow Android apps to run on Windows, and the Linux Subsystem—not an emulator, but a native interpreter—is what resulted. To get yourself up and running, first go to “Settings → Update & Security → For Developers,” and switch on Developer mode. Then enable the appropriate subsystem in the “Programs and Features” section of Control Panel. Once you’ve rebooted your machine, open up a command prompt as administrator, and type lxrun /install /y to automatically…

Intel isn’t just sticking an AMD graphics chip into the same package as its CPUs. Intel also now plans to compete directly in the high-performance GPU market with its own in-house designs. The endgame seems pretty clear—namely a unified high-performance solution that combines full CPU and graphics capabilities, and pushes all of Intel’s major competitors in the performance PC market to the sidelines. But hang on: There’s another company that has both high-performance x86 CPU and graphics technology. That’s AMD, and in fact, it’s the only company that currently has both in-house. For Intel, high-performance in-house graphics is merely an aspiration at the moment. If Intel’s big new idea with its CPU-GPU package is so clever, surely AMD can simply do its own version long before Intel can catch up on…

THESE DAYS, our privacy and security are constantly under attack, not just from foreign agencies or hackers, but even big business and government. If you’re looking for a way to keep your online communications private, Retroshare is one of the most secure options out there. Retroshare describes itself as “a secure decentralized communication platform.” In layman’s terms, this means there are no central servers where sensitive information is stored; instead, Retroshare employs a variant of P2P technology it calls Friend-to-Friend (F2F). F2F enables you to build a private network of friends without anyone else—including your friends—knowing who’s in it. Whatever your messaging needs, Retroshare has your back covered. Within a single application, you’ll find tools for instant messaging, private mail, secure P2P file sharing, and public and private chat channels.…

ONCE UPON A TIME, Asrock did something wonderful for owners of Intel’s non-K Skylake CPUs. For years previously, the benefit of buying a pricier K chip was that it was fully unlocked for overclocking, but in 2016, the rulebook was ripped up when a particular feature in Asrock’s Z170A boards allowed base clock multiplier tweaking on those erstwhile locked K CPUs. Before long, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, and the whole gang were offering the same BIOS feature, which disabled integrated graphics and turbo boosting in order to enable overclocking. Intel was understandably less than pleased about this—the company’s entire product hierarchy was suddenly jumbled up like a fallen Jenga tower— and just a couple of months later, overclocking features disappeared from Z170A boards. In terms of outward appearances, the story pretty…

WE KNOW FOR A FACT that the best consumer processor money can buy right now is Intel’s Core i9-7980XE. Its 18 cores of brutality lay waste to most, if not all, multithreaded tasks you can throw its way. And single-core? Well, it’s enough to make most of the four-core mainstream “gaming” parts weep. If budget is no issue, it truly is the processor to have. In the real world, however, budgets exist, money matters, and even the most foolhardy of content creators would find it hard to disregard the advantages of investing in AMD’s Threadripper platform instead. OK, the performance is a little sluggish, and there are issues in some titles, but the fact is, it’s almost half the price of its Intel counterparts, making it stunningly good in the…

OH, ASUS, what have you done to our beloved TUF? A brand synonymous with endurance, world firsts, the introduction of dust protection, impeccable cooling, incredible overclocking stability, and a neutral color palette, capable of appeasing even the most accent-phobic of system builders, has been reduced to a budget, entry-level board, daubed with yellow construction-site paint. As you can probably tell, we were quite fond of TUF. It has powered personal rigs and test benches, and has been a brand that we at Maximum PC have always turned to whenever we’ve needed to construct a no-fuss, get-the-job-done system for any and all. So, when we spotted these new motherboards on the horizon, well, we wept a little on the inside. Now, let’s get this straight: We’re not bemoaning the fact that…

RAZER IS ONE of those brands you either love or hate. For most, the snake-headed emblem is one to be admired. After all, the company has produced some legendary products over the last decade. From clicky green mechanical (non-Cherry) switches, to the stunning Deathadder, the brand has helped shape and refine exactly what the PC gaming genre is all about. However, not everything it has produced has been a success, and for some (this journalist included), not everything has hit the mark. Mice are hugely subjective peripherals, depending entirely on the human at the other end of them. Ultimately, it always falls down to two things: how large your hands are, and how you use the mouse. From claw grips to palm grips, and large meat hooks to small dainty…

ONE OF THE BEST GAMES never to come to PC, Destiny captivated console gamers as they repeated the same few co-op missions, plus a PvP arena, in search of slightly better guns and armor, handed out with a strong dose of random number generation. Destiny 2 picks up where the first left off, but if you haven’t played it, that doesn’t matter. There’s enough of a recap, and it’s all nonsense anyway. A giant baseball came to Earth, and made everything groovy, only for aliens to show up, and start a war. Now Earth is down to one city, and it’s up to Guardians—that’s you, and there's a lot of you—to defend it. However, in an unusual twist, the aliens won, the source of your powers—Light—was removed, and the remaining…

WE FINALLY GOT in some good Schiit. I’ve been working on plans for a new desk, and ever since having to hand back my Denon DA-300USB DAC, my heart has been pining for a suitable external audio solution. Since the main man, Tuan, has been talking Schiit to me for the last year or so, I figured it was only right I put down some of my hard-earned cash on a doozy of a budget audiophile combo: the Schiit Modi 2 Uber DAC and Magni headphone amp, a small, svelte combination of HRA (High Resolution Audio) awesomeness. Each comes in at a more than affordable $99, with a luscious aluminum chassis, and a teeny form factor. The devices are stackable, measure 5 x 3.5 inches, and as a combo, they’re…