Table of contents for September 2018 in Maximum PC

FORTNITE HAS OVER 125 MILL ION PL AYERS. It’s free, but that hasn’t stopped its developer, Epic Games, from earning big. In May, it coined an estimated $318 million. It’s pulling in a million a day on the mobile version alone, and this is before the Android version is launched later this year. Total earnings for the year are expected to top $3 billion. This cascade of cash comes from in-game purchases: the Battle Pass, which unlocks rewards; and cosmetic frippery, such as skins and emotes. Research by LendEDU reveals that 68.85 percent of players have parted with cash, at an average of $84.67 each. For 36.78 percent of those, this is the first time they’ve made in-game purchases. What do players get for this cash? Not much really; the…

MICROSOFT’S SURFACE PRO has been a success, to the surprise of some, as Microsoft’s record with PC hardware is patchy. It has a funky, moderately innovative design, and an air of class. The smaller Surface models fared less well, initially being underpowered, and lacking full x86 compatibility. Microsoft stopped selling the previous small model, the Surface 3, in 2016. Now it’s back with the Surface Go. The Surface Go follows the established design pattern with a detachable keyboard, a back stand, 3:2 Gorilla glass touchscreen with stylus support, front and back cameras, and a magnesium case. Only it’s smaller and lighter than any previous model at a svelte 9.6 x 6.9 inches, and just a third of an inch thick. It weighs in at 1.15lb. The 10-inch screen has a…

TAKE YOUR MIND BACK for a moment. The year is 2007, Steve Jobs has just announced the iPhone, the Indianapolis Colts have finished smashing the Chicago Bears in this year’s Super Bowl, and Windows Vista has now been out for three whole months. Microsoft’s operating system brought with it a hefty installation size, a ton of unnecessary resource-consuming processes, and—more importantly for us—access to the Windows Media Center across all of the various editions of the flagship OS. For the first time (outside of the Windows XP Media Center Edition OS, of course), there was an intuitively designed, integrated user interface developed specifically for simpler input methods, such as a remote, and baked directly into the operating system itself. This is arguably the one thing that Windows Vista got right, and…

To record vocals, drums, guitars, bass, and other instruments with an audio jack input, you need an audio interface. That’s a fancy name for a box that receives analog inputs and translates them into digital data for your PC via a USB cable. Let’s start with recording sound via a microphone. With the mic plugged in and positioned, open up your DAW, and select an audio track so that it’s listening to the input your mic’s plugged into. Now “arm” it by pressing the red recording button, and make a noise into the mic. If you can see the levels coming into your DAW, the signal chain is set up correctly, and you’re ready to record. Some mics require phantom (additional) power, which is a matter of pressing the “+48V”…

You’ll get the basics from this article, but to take your home recording skills to the next level, at some point you’ll turn to video tutorials on YouTube. And it’s great that such a wealth of information from so many different voices is at your fingertips. But it’s also a double-edged sword. If the tutorial you’re watching recommends a particular VST or plugin, make sure you’re not watching a piece of sponsored content. This happens a lot. It’s a similar story if the content creator is selling a bunch of instrument presets—find another tutorial. There are plenty of knowledgeable studio engineers and producers on YouTube, so you don’t need to try to glean information from covert advertisements. Find a producer or engineer who makes the kind of music you endeavor…

A shader is a small program that is run within the GPU’s pipeline and manipulates either individual pixels or the geometry in the world in some way. The term comes from shaders’ first implementations, which were for shading algorithms, such as the Phong shader to produce smooth images. There are effectively two distinctive types of shaders: pixel (or “fragment” in OpenGL/Vulkan parlance) shaders and vertex shaders. Pixel shaders work at the end of the pipeline, and their output is an individual pixel’s RGB and Alpha value. What we’re calling vertex shaders work on manipulating point vertices of models (three vertices make a triangle) for lighting and warping. Other shaders—geometry, tessellation (fixed function), hull, domain—are all about manipulating geometry within the world. Importantly, shaders are able to process basic input and…

YOU’LL NEED THIS FACEBOOK ACCOUNT And the desire to restrict what you share with the world. THERE’S A LOT OF CONCERN about online privacy nowadays, particularly on Facebook in the light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which personally identifiable data on over 87 million Facebook users was collected without their consent—if it’s not your friends guessing your password and posting hilarious jokes under your name, it’s the more sinister abuse of your personal information. There are steps you can take against these intrusions, both on Facebook and on the wider web. The latter boils down to making sure your passwords can’t be guessed, worked out through social engineering, or put together from multiple sources. They need to be long, too, so a brute force attack—which tries multiple passwords extremely…

YOU’LL NEE D THIS PHOTOSHOP You can subscribe to various packages at www.adobe.com. Alternatively, use Photoshop Elements or GIMP. TEXT IS FINE. IT’S OK. There’s plenty of it in this magazine—but, with apologies to the vast design and sub-editing departments, it’s not very exciting. It doesn’t have to be this way, however. With a bit of Photoshop know-how (there’s nothing too CC-specific here; it could be done in Photoshop Elements or GIMP, for that matter), you can whip up exciting-looking text snippets that, if kept simple enough, could be used for a logo or as an eye-catching header for a newsletter. The trick we’re using is a Layer Mask, which enables you to affect how transparent a layer is by painting directly on the layer. Much of the time, this…

IT’S BEEN JUST OVER five years since Razer introduced the original Blade laptop. At the time, it was the gaming answer to the everpopular MacBook form factor—14-inch body, aluminum chassis, solid clamshell design. Compared to its contemporaries, the Blade was minuscule, but gaming laptops have slimmed down since, culminating in the Max-Q design seen in the best laptops of the last year or so. With the Blade 15, Razer has caught up with the competition in terms of what makes a great gaming laptop. Solid build, slim body, elegant design, long battery life, thin bezels, 144Hz screen, and internals powerful enough to play the latest games. That means an Intel Core i7-8750H paired with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. What sets the Blade 15 apart is the details. Its…

NOW, WE’RE NOT USUALLY a magazine to focus on gaming, because we happily leave that to our sister title PC Gamer, but there’s no arguing about the fact that the majority of the team here certainly does. It’s a great way to while away a few hours at the end of the working day, either relaxing with our buddies, or even (oddly, in our modern age) bonding with family. Over the last 10 years, PCs have arguably cemented themselves at the center of the gaming world. Say what you like about consoles, but you just can’t argue with the versatility that a Windows system provides when it comes to that favored technological pastime. Whether it’s first-person shooters, racing sims, real-time strats, or just goofy indie platformers, the PC can and…

THE GUYS AND GALS at AMD are busy bees. Not a month goes by without something interesting emerging. This month, we have some fleshing out of the midrange Ryzen family. There have been “leaks” (the processor world does seem very prone to this) on four new Ryzens. We have the Ryzen 5 2500X, a four-core, eight-thread chip, running at a base of 3.6GHz, with a boost of 4GHz. It’s faster than the 1500X, but loses out on 8MB of L3 cache. Sitting under this is the Ryzen 3 2300X, a fourcore, four-thread CPU, running at 3.5GHz, with a 4GHz boost. We also have two low-power Ryzens due soon. The Ryzen 5 2600E, a six-core, 12-thread chip, with a base speed of 3.1GHz. Above this is the Ryzen 7 2700E, an…

ROUND 1 Responsiveness We have convinced ourselves that the faster a keyboard reacts, the better it is. And in many ways, we’re right: Earlier key switch actuation reduces tendon strain by allowing a lighter touch and preventing the shock that bottoming out sends back down to the wrists; it also gives you that extra femtosecond advantage in Twitch games, though if you’re not a South Korean Starcraft pro, it isn’t as valuable as you might think. Whatever the importance, membrane loses out here. Certain designs may have a dome and actuator that squish the appropriate contact on the circuit board more quickly, but you’ll almost always find yourself going full-travel with your switches. Mechanical is a mixed bag, given the difference in actuation points and spring stiffness between various key…

WHEN IT COMES to choosing the hardware for your HTPC, unsurprisingly, like the rest of our most prestigious hobby, it’s very easy to get swept up in one of those buying frenzies, and lay down way too much cash for a machine that’s far more powerful than you really need. GTX 1080? Intel Core i7-8700K? 16GB of DDR4? Sure, you could shell out for all that, but unless your use case scenario includes some exceptionally high-end gaming on the side of your entertainment shenanigans, the reality is that it would be total overkill for your requirements. So, then, let’s break it down: What exactly do you need for a home theater PC? Well, the truth of the matter is that Kodi will actually run on everything from the Raspberry Pi all the…

1 INSTALL WINDOWS You need a full version of Windows on this rig for more compatibility later down the line, and there’s a few important steps to take into consideration. Use the Windows Media Tool [Image A] to create a bootable USB stick with Windows 10, plug it into a USB port on your HTPC machine, enter the BIOS, and direct the boot order at the USB stick. Point the Windows installer at your main SSD drive, and begin the installation process. There’s one important thing you need to remember during this HTPC install, and that’s to only create a local account, and one without a password. Remember: This is meant to be a home theater PC, a switch-it-on-and-go machine, as opposed to something more secure that contains potentially confidential…

For key instruments, drums, and EDM sounds, MIDI is your best friend. It stands for “musical instrument digital interface,” but in practical terms, that’s neither here nor there, is it? What you need to know is that it enables you to draw notes into a sequencer, and those notes can be applied to any number of virtual instruments. Many producers eschew instruments altogether and create entire songs with MIDI, using either a MIDI controller to program the notes, or doing it the harder way with a mouse, note by note. MIDI controllers, either in a traditional keyboard layout or nu-school grids of buttons, can be bought for less than $100, and take a lot of the chore away from programing. If you already have mad keyboard or piano skills, go…

Naim Uniti Atom A GOOD HOME THEATER IS about more than just impressive visuals. It’s an entire experience. Something to be savored and enjoyed. A combination of many elements coming together to provide a sensorially evocative event that captivates the mind and transports you away from the rigors and chores of everyday life. Visuals are just one part of that symphony of ecstasy. Naim’s Uniti Atom is the final piece in our home theater puzzle. It’s a highly advanced all-in-one solution that incorporates a phenomenal array of technologies in a stylish anodized box of aural wonder. Don’t believe us? Well, at its base level, it’s a high-quality DAC and speaker amplifier. It supports Bluetooth, 2.4/5GHz Wi-Fi connectivity, and Gigabit Ethernet, has dual USB ports, packs triple digital inputs (two TOSLink,…

The USA has reclaimed the number one spot for the world’s fastest supercomputer, a position that China had held on to since 2012 with its 10-million RISC core, 93-teraflop Sunway TaihuLight. At the heart of each of the 4,600 servers powering the Oak Ridge Summit system are two 22-core IBM Power9 processors, and six Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs. It’s this combination that pushes its processing capabilities to a mind-blowing 200 petaflops—that’s over 20 times the power of the Sunway. What Summit represents is the sea change in direction of high-performance computing toward AI-based processing. AI often uses vast training models and datasets that need to be repetitively processed at high speed. The Summit, with its peak half-precision speed of 3 billion billion operations per second, represents 3 exaops of AI—if…

BACKGROUND Unveiled at Apple’s recent education-focused event, we expect the new iPad is less of a “hot new sequel” and more like a “revised edition paperback with improved illustrations.” While this iPad’s specs reveal two major updates—an upgraded processor, and Pencil support—has Apple quietly changed anything else? Let’s find out with a teardown! MAJOR TECH SPECS Apple A10 fusion processor with embedded M10 motion coprocessor 9.7-inch multi-touch Retina display with 2048×1536 resolution (264 ppi) and non-laminated display assembly 32GB or 128GB of storage 8-megapixel 1080p rear-facing iSight camera + 1.2-megapixel 720p front-facing FaceTime HD camera 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band MIMO Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.2 Touch ID fingerprint sensor + three-axis gyro + accelerometer + barometer + ambient light sensor Apple Pencil support KEY FINDINGS We’ve been around this block a few times,…

YOU’LL NEED THIS DOSBOX Download the software for free from www.dosbox.com. VINTAGE GAMES You need either the original game files or a CD. IF YOU LIVED THROUGH THE ’90S, you probably have fond memories of gaming classics such as Red Alert, Doom, and Starcraft. Despite the clunky graphics and witless AI, it’s hard to recapture the sense of excitement that came from giving Stalin a bad day, or battling against the forces of hell on the moons of Mars. Sadly, most of these vintage gaming classics don’t work natively on modern PCs. This dilemma is the focus of the DOSBox project, an emulator designed to mimic Intel x86. The emulator’s primary focus is to play games that were released prior to Windows XP (2001), but in practice, you can actually…

There’s another type of mask—the Clipping Mask—that works slightly differently. Place a text layer below a layer that’s filled with an image or pattern, and right-click the top layer. Select “Create Clipping Mask” from the menu, and you’ll find the pattern is now only visible inside the text itself. A small arrow appears on the layer’s entry on the palette, pointing down from one layer to the other, to show what’s happening. The layers retain all their information, despite much of it not being visible—so you can use the Move tool to move the pattern within the text, and to move the text layer on top of the pattern. You can continue to edit the type, too, if you change your mind in the future.…

ULTRABOOKS MAY HAVE b een w ith u s f or over six years now, but it still feels like we haven’t quite hit the perfect balance of performance in a slimline package. One brand that has gotten intriguingly close to this portable nirvana is the ZenBook from Asus, and this latest iteration looks to build on the strengths of previous models, with bang up-to-date components, and an even sleeker chassis. Color us interested. The headline component on the spec sheet is the processor, and in this machine that’s just half an inch thick, you’ll find a quad-core, eight-thread Core i7-8550U (Kaby Lake R). This chip has a base clock of 1.8GHz, but generally runs quicker, thanks to the joys of turbo boost. But how much it boosts is a…

PUNY PIXELS are an increasingly big deal. The smaller the pixels, the sharper, crisper, and more detailed the display. For devices like smartphones and tablets, pixel density is all the rage. The pixel counts offered by such devices are on the up, while the size of individual pixels shrinks ever smaller. For the PC, and particularly desktop rigs with large displays, however, it’s more complicated. For starters, achieving so-called “retina”-style pixel density on a monitor measuring, say, 30 inches or more would a require a monumental pixel count, measuring in the high tens of millions. The kind of pixel grid, in other words, that existing display interfaces can’t cope with. Then there’s the minor matter of scaling. With a handheld device, the fact that most of the Internet remains built…

MISTY OLD LONDON is a fine setting for a videogame. Even better if it’s one about monsters hiding in the derelict wharves and foggy back streets. Better still if you’re the monster doing the hiding. You don’t have to be a monster, although Vampyr goads you into becoming one, pointing out how much easier the game would be if you ripped into the throats of every innocent bystander you find with their back turned at the end of an alley, with no one around to raise the alarm. You could feed on rats to satisfy your bloodlust, even though they don’t grant as much XP to put toward greater vampiric powers, and it’s an option you may well take as the atmospheric setting would be nothing without a reluctant anti-hero,…

TRIUMPHS ✓ SAVED FROM PREDATOR Researchers have developed a graphine film that acts as adaptive thermal camouflage, effectively masking hot objects. ✓ FACEBOOK TESTS AR ADS Try that lipstick first, virtually at least, as new augmented reality ads put products on people. ✓ LOCATION IS PRIVATE The Supreme Court has ruled that where you were or are is your business, unless a warrant says otherwise. TRAGEDIES ✗ GAS PUMP HACKED Detroit police are looking for two thieves who remotely stopped a gas pump’s fuel cut-off and made off with about 600 gallons of gas. ✗ EXACTIS DOES IT AGAIN After last year’s data breach, this time details on 230m Americans were left on a public server. ✗ TRACKER TOO REVEALING Polar has pulled its publicly viewable map, which revealed where…

WE HAVE ALAN TURING to thank for music’s long and fruitful relationship with computers. In 1951, he built a device that occupied an entire room at the Computing Machine Laboratory in Manchester, UK, and was capable of playing contemporary favorites “God Save The King,” “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” and “In The Mood.” The acetate disc recording was recently restored, and the giggles of the celebrated scientist’s colleagues can be heard between the violin-like notes of his device. Sixty-seven years later, the technology required to write, record, produce, and master an industry-standard banger fits within a PC case. Recording software and hardware has never been cheaper or more accessible, and the Internet has birthed an inexhaustible information resource for budding musicians and producers. In other words, you have little excuse for…

Writing and recording the instrument parts is only half the battle. Making those parts sound good together, and making the final song sing out on car stereos, smartphones, radios, and Bluetooth speakers, comes down to the mix. Starting at complexity level one, consider the volume and pan of each track. In the traditional rock band setup, vocals and bass live in the middle of the mix, while guitars and other instruments are panned either side, and drums live across the full stereo spread. In EDM, similar principles apply: vocals and bass in the middle, other parts either side. Adjust the pan on your tracks until you can hear them all distinctly, then make adjustments in volume so it sounds like each part has breathing space, or to put it another…

GRAPHICS CARDS have come a long way since the days of 3dfx Voodoo cards. No one expects fixed pipelines with fixed functions in this day and age, but back at the dawn of 3D acceleration, they were necessities. Simpler, happier days. Modern graphics cards are a whole brave new world; programmable capabilities have opened up fresh avenues that go beyond rendering polygons. Entire server farms now exist solely to power banks of graphics cards and their beating GPU hearts. In this feature, we delve into the world of modern GPUs, and explore how their flexible and super-powerful new designs can vastly outstrip standard processors and power new applications, from render farms and ray tracing to cryptomining and deep-learning applications. It’s no wonder Nvidia has seen its server division’s revenue increase 10-fold…

YOU’LL NEED THIS RASPBERRY PI The miniature computer costs as little as $35. WANT TO BUILD SOMETHING CLEVER USING MACHINE LEARNING AND SOME FAIRLY SERIOUS TOOLS? GOOD. WE’RE GOING TO USE GOOGLE’S TENSORFLOW TO CONSTRUCT A NEURAL NETWORK THAT CAN IDENTIFY IMAGES SEEN BY A PICAMERA. YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MACHINE LEARNING, AND ALONG THE WAY YOU’LL LEARN SOME KEY CONCEPTS, AND START GETTING UNDER THE HOOD. WE’RE USING A PICAMERA, BUT YOU CAN STILL DO MOST OF THE TUTORIAL EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE ONE. TensorFlow is Google’s machine learning framework, used by engineers for research and to build production systems. It’s a powerful tool, with an unlimited number of ways to explore it. To use TensorFlow, you need to have a huge amount of data…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 10 With the Fall Creators Update. WINDOWS 10’S PHOTOS APP got a lot of love from last year’s Fall Creators Update. Among many other improvements, it gained the ability to edit videos, something you wouldn’t expect from an app simply called “Photos.” In the absence of a standalone Videos app—and with the old Windows Movie Maker now removed from Microsoft’s website—Photos is the best free video-editing app you can get, without delving into either the uncertainties of the Microsoft Store or the wilds of the web. In Photos, you can arrange and trim your home movies, add music, titles, and effects, and export the whole project as a file that’s ready to be uploaded to YouTube or for playing on the family TV. Photos’ video-editing capabilities…

DOSBox is capable of emulating the IPX (Internet Package Exchange Protocol), which was used for playing network games in classics such as Doom and Quake. In simplest terms, one computer acts as the games server to which other players can then connect. To get started, open the file “C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74 Options.bat” to access the DOSBox configuration. Scroll down to ipx=false and change it to true to enable IPX. Next, open DOSBox on the machine you want to use as a server, and run the command ipxnet startserver. Ask each of the players on your local network to launch DOSBox and run the command ipxnet connect <ip>, where “ip” is the local IP address of the server. In Windows 10, you can find this by opening the Start menu, and…

NOTHING SAYS “PREMIUM” like a Formula board. They are the kings of Asus’s consumer lineup. Granted the very best features from each generation of mobo design, the Formula is a luxury for those willing to splurge the coin. The tenth iteration of this design ethos has lead to this: a $350 masterpiece of connectivity, rear I/O, BIOS, liquid-cooling, and armorplated PCB. And it looks marvelous. That thermal armor—which was introduced with the TUF series, way back in the Z77 era—is hardly a new concept, and whether it actually reduces overall stress and temps on the PCB is still highly debated. That said, there’s no denying just how impressive this thing feels in your hands. The reinforced backplate alone must weigh half a pound at least. RGB lighting is subtle, with…

MECHANICAL KEYBOARDS have been a significant part of the PC gamer’s toolkit for the last seven years, and with good reason. Those simple rectangles laden with Cherry switches provide those who invest in the pricey products with a feeling unlike any that a membrane or chiclet keyboard could produce. The responsiveness and the immediate and tactile nature exuded by those switches is second to none. Since those early days, we’ve seen refinement upon refinement. So much so that the question has to be asked: Where do you go from here? How do you stand out in such a crowded market? It’s a tough one, but Roccat believes it may have the answer. The German manufacturer, known for its budget-oriented headsets, mice, and keyboards, has typically not been seen at the…

THE QUESTION OF WHETHER it’s right for man to recreate dinosaurs, put by Jeff Goldblum in the 1993 movie that started the franchise off, has fallen by the wayside. Dinosaurs are here, it’s almost normal now, and people spend vast amounts of money to travel to South America to see them. As a management sim, Jurassic World Evolution gives you the Muertes archipelago as your playground—four parks in various states of disrepair, and a sandbox island to do what you wish on. The starting island is straightforward, and a three-star rating is enough to unlock the next, a notoriously windswept island on which some fool forgot to build any storm defenses. Getting four stars on the first island unlocks the sandbox, but to get this—and the sandbox, Isla Nublar, the…

> Forgotten Power > Password Picks > Threadripper Gaming Editorial Standards The headline for Zak Storey’s column is offensive to me and, I have no doubt, to other readers. Who on your staff believes it appropriate to print such a coarse expression? Once you identify them, ask them if they believe such language enhances or cheapens the reputation of your publication. Might they believe that one’s choice of words makes no difference? I am disappointed you allowed this. Please reconsider your editorial standards if this language is considered as meeting the current ones. –Walter O'Briant EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ALAN DEXTER, RESPONDS: I apologize unreservedly for the title in question, and the offense caused. You’re right, it absolutely does not live up to the editorial standards we hold ourselves to, and I…