Inhoudsopgave van December 2024 - Maximum PC

IN LATE SEPTEMBER, Minisforum revealed it was working on the EliteMini AI370 but provided no in-depth details. Around the same time, a leaked promotional poster teased what the mini PC would look like. Minisforum has now ended speculation by officially announcing the release of the AI370, the first gaming mini PC in its lineup with an AMD Strix Point APU. The specs were also leaked ahead of time, so it was no surprise when the official announcement revealed that the EliteMini AI370 has a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370—a 12-core, 24-thread CPU based on AMD’s Zen 5 CPU core design, with a Radeon 890M iGPU. That iGPU has 16 RDNA 3.5-based Compute Units—a third more than previous-gen iGPUs used in mini PCs. According to synthetic benchmarks by Andreas Osthoff of…

AMD CLAIMS it wants to sell more graphics cards. The solution is simple: lower prices. Not just lower prices eventually, but from the beginning of a new GPU generation. This may seem like a retina-popping glimpse of the painfully obvious, but it needs saying, because it seems AMD doesn’t get it. That needs to change if AMD is to win market share back from Nvidia. In recent years, AMD’s playbook has been depressingly predictable, at least for its graphics cards. A new family of GPUs is rolled out positioned slightly below Nvidia’s competing cards. Maybe you get slightly more raster performance for your money, a few more GB of VRAM. But nothing truly compelling against Nvidia’s unbeatable DLSS scaling tech and undeniably superior ray tracing. Duly this new generation of…

WWW.INTEL.COM Intel has received some serious flack in the last few months concerning chip stability and potential long-term damage due to overvolting, among a few other issues, but at last it now feels as though that’s behind us. We’ve finally got new BIOS updates that supposedly rectify the majority of issues found in the 14th gen since launch. As a result, we can start recommending you pick up these processors once again. To match our PS5 Pro’s CPU, we’ve picked up one of the best value budget Intel chips you can get your hands on, the Intel Core i5-14600K. It’s no slouch either. With 14 cores—six performance, and eight efficient—it packs in 20 threads, with a max clock speed of 5.3GHz under load. There’s 24MB of total cache, and it…

WWW.FRACTAL-DESIGN.COM When it came to a case, our choices were limited. We wanted something compact enough to fit in a living room without compromising on the look and feel of a console-killing box. There’s plenty of ITX chassis, but few that come close to looking like a modern-day console. Fractal does have the Ridge chassis, which is more tower-esque, and similarly shaped to the PS5 and its Pro sibling, but it offers limited room to work in, and we think the Terra looks a lot better. Fractal’s woven in some fantastic aluminum panels in three colorways (black, white, and green), accented with a lovely walnut plate on the bottom. It’s without a doubt one of the nicest-looking ITX cases we’ve seen. Ventilation is impressive, too. There’s no mesh dust guards…

WWW.GIGABYTE.COM This is actually perhaps one of the more interesting picks here; not because it’s particularly exciting from a graphical standpoint, but from a purely speculative level, we suspect that this might be the GPU that’s going into the PS5 Pro. Or at least a souped-up version of it. According to our sister publication GamesRadar, the current PS5 features an RDNA 2 GPU that pumps out 10 TFLOPs of total performance (at single-point precision), with 16GB of GDDR6. We know the new GPU should produce about 45 percent more rendering performance, with 67 percent more compute units. That suggests we’ll be looking at close to 14.9 TFLOPs or so of raw performance, if that’s purely based on single point. The closest card to that figure is the 7600 XT under…

For our system testing, we use a multitude of separate benchmarks. For our CPU tests, these include Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench 6.3.0. All results are indexes in this case. Multicore per thread is achieved by dividing the total multicore scores by the number of threads on the CPU. For storage testing, we’re taking advantage of CrystalDiskMark 8.0.5, the best scores are in bold, and all results are reported in MB/s. Throughout our entire benchmarking process, we test each system with a power meter plug running, and the latest version of HWMonitor installed and up as well. This then allows us to report on the maximum power draw and max temperatures seen over the entire benchmarking process. CPU PERFORMANCE CINEBENCH 2024 & GEEKBENCH STORAGE PERFORMANCE CRYSTALDISKMARK 8.0.5 POWER DRAW & TEMPERATURE HWMONITOR…

For our AI testing, we use UL Procyon’s Professional Benchmark Suite. We focus on its AI Computer Vision (which gives us a gauge on how our systems operate when dealing with inference engine tasks), and AI Image Generation benchmarks. For Computer Vision, we report on the total inferences performed, the average inference time, plus the Index score across all tests. The Index score is more valuable, as it’s the time taken between inferences that indicates performance. We run all tests on AI Vision using Float16 precision. We test both the CPU and the GPU under Microsoft’s ML API. For Image Generation, we test under Stable Diffusion 1.5 (Float16 precision), using all engines available. However for comparison, we only include scores from the same engine. We report on the Index score, the…

How does Cryptomator work? It lets you create password-protected folders—or vaults—which can be stored in your cloud folder. You place your files inside this, and they’re scrambled using AES 256-bit encryption, with a personal encryption key that remains in your possession. Download and install Cryptomator (or use the portable version), then open the app. Click ‘Add’, and choose ‘New Vault’. Give it a suitably descriptive name, and click ‘Next’, then choose ‘Custom Location’, and click ‘Choose’ to select a folder inside your cloud storage folder (such as ‘C:\Users\ Username\OneDrive’). Click ‘Next’ twice, then enter a strong password or passphrase (store this in your password manager), and choose whether to create a fail-safe recovery key. Finally, click ‘Create Vault’. Once created, you’re prompted to click ‘Unlock Now’ to make the vault visible…

Yes, we’re talking about games consoles again. Don’t worry, we know this isn’t Maximum PlayStation, but with the arrival of the PS5 Pro and its radical shift upwards in pricing, it got us thinking about our console cousins and just how wildly different the two ecosystems are. As you’ll have surmised from our build feature, trying to cram that much power into such a small form factor in the PC enthusiast’s world, at an identical price, is both impractical and kind of impossible. Sony might have bumped that $ figure skyward, but in many ways, it’s justifiable, certainly if the GPU is as close to the RX 7600 XT as we suspect it may be. Nonetheless, we’re not about to tell you it’s that clear-cut, that the console finally has…

YOU’LL NEED THIS VIRTUALBOX Download it from www.virtualbox.org. IN THE LATE 16TH CENTURY, King Philip II of Spain submitted a formal complaint to His Holiness Pope Gregory XIII. The complaint concerned an encrypted letter that had been intercepted and decoded by the legendary mathematician François Viète. The king accused Viète of deploying black magic. Pope Gregory, whose own cryptographers had been reading encoded Spanish letters for decades, quietly shelved the complaint. Philip’s hubris was an excellent illustration of Schneier’s Law, usually phrased as, “Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can’t think of how to break it.” This is particularly true for Windows users who deploy security-in-a-box solutions, believing installing certain software will protect their system for any manner of attacks. In this guide,…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 11 An up-to-date installation. LINUX ISO/DMG FILE Installation media. MICROSOFT HAS ANNOUNCED that support for Windows 10 will officially end in October 2025. This is bad news for users of older PCs, because Windows 11 (and presumably its successor) requires devices to have at least an 8th-gen Intel or an AMD 3015e CPU. Your PC must also support TPM (Trusted Platform Module) v2. If your computer doesn’t meet these requirements, you’re not alone. The tech market analysis firm Canalys estimates that roughly 20 percent of devices will become e-waste due to incompatibility with Windows 11—that comes to around 240 million devices. Luckily, there’s a third option besides continuing to use an obsolete OS or junking your current machine. The Linux operating system has much more forgiving…

MICROSOFT KNOWS how to make a good portable machine, but the Surface Laptop often pales against the funkier Surface Pro tablets. This latest iteration, which brings with it the Snapdragon X Elite processor and the Copilot+ designation, is far from boring. Sure, the keyboard may not detach to enable you to use it like the kind of slate popularized by Apple, but this remains a fine laptop that helps show off the potential of this exciting new processor. There’s one thing in particular that lets the Surface Laptop—and so far all Copilot+ machines—down. And that’s the GPU. While a lot of work and marketing budget has gone into supporting the Hexagon NPU, which puts out the 45TOPS necessary for that Copilot+ badge and means your AI workloads aren’t shunted off…

LIKE SHIPS DROPPING out of warp in front of you (excuse our Star Trek metaphors this month), Snapdragon really has taken the advantage when it comes to the great laptop wars currently unfolding. Yes, if you want a top-tier gaming notebook, your only choice is to go with Intel or AMD for that battle (and to be honest, Intel is still holding that market well at the moment). Yet for products that lean more on the side of creativity, productivity, and just getting stuff done, it’s hard to suggest anything else over those Armbased processors right now. Take this Acer Swift Go 14. It’s fantastically tempting: $720 straight out of the gate, with 16GB of LPDDR5X @ 6,400MT/s (unfortunately soldered, so not upgradable), along with a crisp 2,880 x 1,800…

WE DON’T ENVY BLOOBER TEAM. Nobody actually wants the difficult task of updating something as nuanced, emotionally sensitive, and revered as Silent Hill 2. The original has been praised for decades, and picked apart by fans eager to understand every last detail for just as long. It’s a game where every strange texture and odd room decoration means something, the game’s unforgettable atmosphere held together by the finest of threads. This modern remake of that legendary tale gets off to a great start, offering an extensive range of graphical settings and accessibility options. It doesn’t take long to tweak the game into a smoothly running ray-traced beauty, or to adjust the controls and their behavior so they’re just the way you like them. A personal favorite is the option to…

BOTH AMD and Intel have announced their latest CPU line-up, with models focused on improving AI integration and power management. The AMD Ryzen AI PRO 300 Series represents the third generation of the manufacturer’s AI mobile chips. AMD boasts of “unprecedented” performance and “multi-day” battery life. It also claims AI performance up to three times faster than the previous generation. Indeed, the flagship Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 supposedly offers up to 40 percent higher performance and 14 percent faster productivity performance compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7 165U. It also boasts 12 cores, 24 threads, and up to 5.1GHz boost. The series deploys XDNA 2 architecture to the integrated NPU, ostensibly delivering up to 55 TOPS of AI processing power. On the Intel side and its new…

IT’S OVER 14 YEARS since Red Dead Redemption first took the gaming world by storm on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. In 2023, the game was released on the Switch and PS4. This puzzled many gamers who were hoping for a PC version. Rockstar has now rectified this by announcing that Red Dead Redemption will be available on PC by the time you read this. Rockstar has also hinted at a number of PC-specific enhancements to John Marston’s travels through the Old West. These include native 4K resolution at up to 144Hz, if you have compatible hardware. The PC game will also include support for both ultrawide (21:9) and super-ultrawide (32:9) monitors, as well as HDR10. Unlike in the original game, there’s also support for Nvidia DLSS 3.7, AMD…

> Switch from Firefox > Batch app launcher > Best phone backup Ditching Firefox I thought supporting Firefox and Mozilla was the smart thing to do, privacy-wise, but Mozilla’s latest ‘feature’ giving advertisers information about user activity (the socalled Privacy Preserving Attribution feature) has left me unsure I can trust them, particularly as it’s been enabled by default. I’m aware of other browsers touting their privacy credentials, like Brave and DuckDuckGo, but what would you suggest—am I being overly sensitive about Mozilla, or should I be looking at yet another browser migration? –Debra Pendergraft THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Unfortunately, Mozilla’s latest move to try to balance privacy with revenue generation through ads has left a sour taste in the mouth for many. The launch of Privacy Preserving Attribution came just weeks…

WWW.MSI.COM An oldie but a goodie, this isn’t the first time we’ve used MSI’s MPG Z790i EDGE WiFi, and with good reason. This is an outstandingly well-packed board, with a rich feature set for its price. It’s not the cheapest ITX board, but if you can withstand that price point, it seriously delivers. Not only does it come with a super-clean aesthetic, it’s also got builtin active cooling for the VRMs, support for PCIe 5.0 GPUs (although, sadly, no PCIe 5.0 M.2 support), and a healthy amount of USB integration. It’s actually the M.2 solution that most impressed us, because it’s got a twin PCIe slot on the top side (one running at 4.0 and one at 3.0), plus an additional 4.0 drive underneath the board itself, along with support for…

WWW.BEQUIET.COM There are a number of small power supplies out there, but certain rules apply: Get one from a brand you can trust, with a solid warranty. And don’t ever go for a cheaper option, because although there’s a limited number of genuine PSU manufacturers out there (with many providing their solutions to third parties with fresh branding), it’s never worth the risk. If something goes wrong here, it can take your entire system with it. All $1,500 of it. That’s why we’ve picked up a 600W BeQuiet! SFX-L PSU. It boasts an 80+ Gold rating, meaning high efficiency. PCPartPicker reckons the total system spec will top out at about 452W or so at max load—in our testing, we saw max draw sit at 458.9W—making this a good choice for our…

WWW.CORSAIR.COM Corsair’s been making memory kits since the dawn of time (or it certainly feels that way), and it knows how to do it well. This is a unique pick if we’re trying to compare a PC versus a PS5 Pro. Most notably because the way the PlayStations are configured means that the RAM is effectively shared between the CPU and the GPU. As such, the PS5 only has 16GB of GDDR6 in it—that’s it. In a PC, we don’t have that luxury, but then we’re going to be doing a lot more stuff with it. To that end, we’ve picked up this 32GB kit from Corsair, clocking in at a tasty 6,000MT/s at C36, giving it a tidy latency, and at a reasonable price, too. It’s also incredibly low profile, meaning…

THERE’S JUST SOMETHING awesome about ITX builds. Second only to perhaps liquid cooling, ITX is one of those form factors that takes no small amount of patience and ingenuity to pull off. Inevitably, no matter what you build, or how you build it, you’re going to come across problems, refits, part removal, and reinstallation. It’s just the nature of an ITX PC. They’re awkward by design, because they have to be—they have to fit in that incredibly compact form factor. If this were any other case in any other form factor, we’d be lambasting it and the manufacturer for being stingy with space to hit some market metric, or push you into buying a more expensive, larger version. Yet in the world of ITX, being as small as possible is…

Game tests are performed on Ray Tracing Ultra (Cyberpunk), Ultra (Far Cry 6), Maximum (Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail), and Ultra (Total War: Warhammer 3) graphics presets. Three runs are performed per title, per resolution. Cyberpunk is always tested with ray tracing enabled regardless. Under its second set of conditions, DLSS/FSR/XeSS is enabled in Cyberpunk dependent on GPU manufacturer, with the upscaling preset set to Quality. Nvidia cards also have AI Frame Generation enabled. FF XIV Dawntrail is utilizing FSR across the board regardless of GPU, with LOD on Distant Objects enabled, and dynamic resolution disabled. Far Cry 6 is tested with DXR disabled, and the HD Texture pack downloaded and enabled. 1080P PERFORMANCE 1080P PERFORMANCE 4K PERFORMANCE 4K PERFORMANCE…

HOW VULNERABLE do you feel as a PC user? If it’s not the constant blitz of malware and adware, it’s a steady stream of newly discovered vulnerabilities that could result in all kinds of information leaking out on to the internet. In this feature, we’ll show you how to add the layers of security you need to protect yourself and your identity online. We won’t waste time on the basics—we’re going to assume you’re smart enough to have strong anti-malware software installed, while realizing the key to staying safe is to minimize your exposure and risk. Neither will we tell you how to behave on social media or why you shouldn’t hand out your social security number or credit card to anyone who asks for it online. No, instead we’ll delve…

One of the most effective ways to lock down your online presence is by minimizing your exposure to the internet. Why rely on third parties to host your data or provide certain services you can run for yourself with a suitable server and the right tools? Over the past few years, we’ve shown you how to build a low-cost, low-powered server for 24-7 use (see the April 2024 issue for its latest iteration), then populate it with services running as isolated Docker or—more recently—Podman containers. If you dig through your back issues, you will find projects on building your own self-hosted password manager using Vaultwarden, a close derivative of Bitwarden with access to all its premium features. Other services you can bring in-house include cloud sync (Nextcloud), ad-blocking (Pi-hole), remote assistance…

Marketing hype. 8K is not something anyone is really considering right now from a consumer perspective. Yes, there are products out there, but they’re not viable from a gaming standpoint. If you’re on the hunt for an 8K monitor, there’s one available: the Dell UP3218K. It’s a 31.5-inch 7680x4320 60Hz IPS monitor, with a 6ms G2G response time, and it can be yours for the low, low price of $4,029. Yep. But it’s not for gaming, it’s a professional design monitor (in fact, you can only connect to it via DisplayPort, which knocks the PS5 Pro out of the running as it only supports HDMI). 8K TVs are similarly a non-starter. Almost all of them are above the 65-inch range, which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that…

IT’S VICTORIAN LONDON, and cholera is creeping through the streets of Soho. Famously, Dr John Snow deduced that the disease wasn’t spread via bad smells in the air, as believed, but through water—in particular, a single water pump. He figured it out with data and a map. The doctor simply plotted the deaths of infected people in the district and had the good sense to notice that they lived near the same water pump. As the story goes, he ended the outbreak by removing the pump’s handle. And so data analytics within cities was born. A few years later, in 1868, the world’s first traffic light was installed, at Bridge Street near Parliament Square in London. This was before cars, but a thousand pedestrians were being killed each year on…

YOU’LL NEED THIS CRYSTALDISKMARK Download it from https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskmark MILLENNIAL MAXIMUM PC readers may find it hard to fathom that solid-state drives first hit the market 33 years ago in 1991. SSDs rely on non-volatile memory (usually NAND flash). This means they have no moving parts, resulting in better data transfer speeds and reduced latency compared to mechanical hard drives. Over the years, SSDs have undergone a number of revisions. The current gold standard is PCIe 5.0, which offers blazingly fast read and write speeds of up to 16GB/s. However, much depends on the number of corresponding PCIe lanes on the CPU. The number of lanes dedicated specifically to the SSD varies by the type of chip used. This may explain why SSDs using PCIe 4.0 remain a much more popular…

1. OPEN SOURCE BROWSER Use browser preferences to check your browser isn’t vulnerable to IP leaks through WebRTC. Disable WebGL to prevent browser fingerprinting. Use sites such as EFF’s Cover Your Tracks or IPLeak to verify changes. 2. PRIVACY ENHANCING EXTENSIONS Add-ons such as uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger can both prevent trackers and filter malicious links, like those to ads. Use a testing website such as http://browseraudit.com to ensure they’re working correctly. 3. HAVE YOU BEEN PWNED? Use websites like these to ensure your credentials haven’t been leaked in data breaches. When generating new passwords—with Diceware, for example—use www.security.org’s online tool to check its strength. 4. CUSTOMIZE FIREWALL SETTINGS Use web tools such as Shields Up to check for open ports. Windows Firewall supports varying access levels for different…

YOU’LL NEED THIS ROUTER With installation media and open source firmware (both optional). AT THE OUTBREAK of World War 1 in August 1914, a British cable ship severed Germany’s undersea telegraph cables. This offered excellent intelligence opportunities by forcing the enemy to communicate over radio waves, which were much easier to intercept and decode. Over a century later, the same holds true for wireless networks, which rely on radio waves to communicate with internet-enabled devices. Wi-Fi poses serious privacy and legal concerns. Germany’s Störerhaftung (Breach of Duty of Care) law can hold Wi-Fi providers responsible for any unlawful activity by connected users; the law was amended in 2017 to exempt Wi-Fi owners who’d taken reasonable precautions. Even if a your neighbor just “borrows” your Wi-Fi for lawful activities, this could…

THE CURIOUS CASE of the 9000 series chips. That’s what we should call AMD’s latest processor launch, because, boy, are these things underwhelming. OK, that’s not entirely fair—they are still good processors on the surface—but you have to look at them in a specific light. There are a lot of similarities between how AMD has marketed these chips and how Nvidia launched its RTX 4080 Super card. What do we mean? Well, on the surface, there’s not a whole lot of change here. The architecture has shifted to TSMC’s N4 FinFET manufacturing process, down from N5 (theoretically 4nm now), but the I/O is still running on N6. Similarly, clock speeds are close to identical, with the max boost on both topping out at 5.6GHz. The core clock actually dropped to…

THE NEW LG UltraGear 32GS95UE is not perfect. But it does a pretty comprehensive job of blowing every existing 32-inch 4K gaming monitor based on Samsung’s QD-OLED panel tech into last month. Wait, make that last year. The thing is, LG’s take on the highre-fresh 4K OLED gaming monitor riff isn’t on a totally different level from those QDOLED panels. In fact, it’s very similar. But it is undeniably and unambiguously, even if ultimately pretty marginally, better. On paper, the UltraGear 32GS95UE is very similar to the likes of the Alienware 32 AW3225QF or Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM. Whether it’s the 32-inch panel size, 4K native resolution, 240Hz refresh, or 0.03ms response, LG’s OLED monitor looks like a dead ringer for those Samsung QD-OLED-based panels. Heck, even the 250…

ACCORDING TO REPORTS on the Chinese social media site Weibo, MediaTek and Nvidia are collaborating on a 3nm AI CPU. If the rumors are to be believed, mass production is tipped to begin in late 2025. Naturally, online speculation like this should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. It wasn’t long ago when reports surfaced that the two companies were working on an AI processor. However, recent speculation centers on integrating an AI CPU with Nvidia’s GPU tech. This is odd, given that MediaTek specializes in mobile products, so would be more likely to develop SoCs. The company also traditionally partners with AMD, not Nvidia. Indeed, there are separate rumors that AMD and MediaTek are partnering on a 5G notebook. This is plausible, given that AMD uses MediaTek’s…

THE BEST EXTERNAL SSDS are much more affordable than they used to be. Not only that, but they’re genuinely portable in a way that older external drives never were. And, if your computer boasts a USB 3.2 port or higher, they can be genuinely speedy, often enough to compete with internal SSDs. If you’re looking to share files between devices, or just carry a humongous games library with you, here are the best ones you can buy. 5 TEAMGROUP PD20 The PD20 is a portable SSD that’s so small, it might as well be a USB flash drive. It doesn’t maintain peak speeds for as long as some other drives, but it does for up to about 50GB-worth of sequential transfers, and is incredibly easy to carry around. If you’re…

WWW.ACER.COM We’re rocking a different SSD this time: Acer’s Predator GM7000. It’s getting a little long in the tooth, debuting back in 2022, but it provides solid PCIe 4.0 performance at a reasonable price. It’s running off InnoGrit’s IG5236 controller, with 2GB of DDR4 DRAM cache, along with 176-layer Micron TLC NAND flash. Advertised read and write speeds top out at the max theoretical throughput for PCIe 4.0 at around 7.4GB/s on the read and 6.7GB/s on write. It also comes with a five-year warranty and a 1,300TBW failure rate. It is significantly faster than the drive in the PS5 Pro. We know that’s a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, too, with speeds topping out at around 5.5GB/s on the read.…

We’re using 3DMark’s latest Speed Way, Steel Nomad, Night Raid, and CPU Profile tests. Speed Way represents a DX12 title at 1440p, with ray-tracing elements, Steel Nomad is DX12 4K without ray tracing, and Night Raid (DX12) is designed with integrated GPUs in mind at 1080p. CPU Profile acts as an additional CPU benchmark (reporting on max thread output only), with specific gaming workloads prioritized. Each synthetic test is run three times, and indexes are reported on. 3DMARK PERFORMANCE…

The Windows disk and file encryption tools are OK as they stand, but they’re not comprehensive and not available to all Windows users. A better option is VeraCrypt (www.veracrypt.fr/en/), which covers all your file and disk encryption needs, and works on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, too. The program opens to its Volume Creation Wizard, where you have a choice of three options. ‘Encrypted file container’ creates a single file that can be mounted like a virtual drive. Any data copied into this vault while it’s unlocked is written to the file and encrypted. It’s the safest option and best for securing sensitive data without locking down your entire PC. You can also encrypt individual partitions or your entire hard drive, including boot volumes. Always take a fail-safe drive image before you…

Your home contact details may be strewn across multiple websites, so how do you remove them? It’s a good idea when auditing online accounts for password strength to also see what personal details are recorded. If possible, remove key info such as your cell number or home address if it’s not strictly required. But what about those sites like Whitepages, where your personal details may be publicly visible? In the case of Whitepages, search for your profile, visit the page, and copy the URL to your clipboard, then visit www.whitepages.com/suppression-requests to request its removal. Other similar places to look include Spokeo (www.spokeo.com/optout) and InstaCheckMate (www.instantcheckmate.com/opt-out/), plus consider entering your contact details into various search engines to see where else they crop up. There are commercial sites that can do a lot…

In a way, but also probably not. We’re in a golden era right now for gaming. Although graphical fidelity may have side-stepped a little as we focus more on shadows and ray tracing, there’s a massive push to improve image quality, color accuracy, and frame rates. That’s what’s driving the industry forward. Each new generation of graphics card pushes the limits of what’s possible on that frontier right now, and it’s having a slow yet cumulative effect on the overall experience for the average gamer, regardless of what platform you play on.…

TIP OF THE MONTH AVOID AUDIO BOTTLENECKS A PC is only as strong as its weakest link—don’t let that be your audio. No matter what you listen to, or how you listen to it, make sure every setting is dialed up to the max. If your speakers support it, ensure they’re operating at 32-bit, 192,000Hz in the Windows sound mixer, and if your streaming service or media program has sound options, check they’re set to the highest quality playback, or you might be short-changing yourself. ZAK STOREY CONTRIBUTOR FORWARD THINKING Nvidia’s AI dominance is absolute. The immense power leveraged by its on-board Tensor Cores and architecture has given it the edge. But it got lucky. It takes around two to three years to develop a new GPU line, and likely…

SSD manufacturers don’t always support more advanced features such as Momentum Cache on Linux. The best way to view your overall SSD health is to install the package Smartmontools by opening Terminal and running: sudo apt install smartmontools You can then run the check using ‘smartctl’. For example: sudo smartctl -a /dev/nvme0n1 If you don’t enjoy using the command line, you can also install GSmartControl via Terminal, which serves as a graphical front end to Smartmontools. Upon launch, you can select your SSD, then enable SMART as well as ‘Auto Offline Data Collection’ before running more checks. You can also check that TRIM is enabled by running: sudo systemctl enable fstrim.timer To manually run TRIM, you can also enter: sudo fstrim -av This command will configure Linux to run regular…

Microsoft’s own BitLocker software ostensibly offers secure system encryption. This means if your device falls into the wrong hands, an attacker won’t be able to recover your data without the correct key. BitLocker ostensibly uses the open source AES encryption algorithm, but as the program is proprietary, the code can’t be publicly verified to be sure AES is implemented correctly. Microsoft also claims it’s turned down repeated requests from law enforcement to code a back door into devices. If you don’t want to take this on trust, consider encrypting your system using Veracrypt (www.veracrypt.fr). This program is not only open source but offers a variety of encryption methods. To start, install the software then select ‘System > Encrypt System Partition/Drive’. The setup wizard offers a ‘Benchmark’ option to test the…

OH MAN, AM I EXCITED. With Intel currently lagging slightly, and AMD’s range of 9000 series chips being mildly underwhelming, Qualcomm’s unofficial announcement, courtesy of CEO Cristiano Amon, stating that it’s targeting the high-end desktop PC fills me with joy. Right now, my daily driver laptop is anything with a Snapdragon chip. The difference is astounding. Performance is identical to, if not better than, every other laptop I’ve tested. Plus, the battery life is insane, going from four to six hours all the way up to 11 or 12 hours of video streaming. Back in October 2020, Neil Mohr, head honcho at Linux Format, wrote a fantastic feature for us on why Apple ditched Intel for Arm in its laptop chips. This was the rise of the M1 MacBooks. Time…

YEAH, WE’RE A LONG WAY from the days of simple motherboard designs, aren’t we? This thing is absolutely dripping with premium-feeling design touches to really make it pop. Pixelated ROG logo carved on the side? Check. Numerous “armor” plates, complete with M.2 heatsinks? Check. Simple and sophisticated RGB lighting solution? Also check. Honestly, though, this thing is more than just good looks—it’s an absolute powerhouse of connectivity, and ironically, in our line of work, it makes things a heck of a lot easier. But before all of that, let’s discuss X870 versus X670 for a second. Or, to be precise, the “E” variant. For those uninitiated to the world of crazy CPU manufacturer nomenclature upgrade paths, the E variants include more PCIe lanes, and typically feature greater support for PCIe…

TWO ISSUES AGO, we took a look at the H7 Flow in all its ATX glory, complete with support for multiple radiators, extensive fan support, a pristine perforated aesthetic, and exceptional quality-of-life improvements for us system builders. This issue, the H5 Flow is on the block, newly released and newly tweaked, although nowhere near as aggressively as its bigger brother. There have been some serious alterations compared to 2023’s edition, though. Long gone is that bottom GPU directional fan bracket, and the removable front radiator bracket, but in its place, the H5 now supports a full 360mm radiator in the front, plus 240mm in the roof. The PSU shroud area has also had its design tweaked, shifting away from solid metal panels to a fully perforated design to better aid…

FULL TRANSPARENCY: We didn’t request this mouse in for review. It was sent to us by Acer, and we’re not sure if it might have been a mistake. Still, we decided to throw it under the microscope and give it the ol’ Maximum PC treatment, with a healthy dose of scrutiny. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve reviewed an Acer gaming mouse, and in such a crowded, competitive market, bringing anything into the pixel-pointy ecosystem like this is, well, a challenge. Whatever you bring to the table needs to be special; it needs to have an edge. Something that categorically elevates it above the many other brands out there trying to take your hard-earned cash in exchange for a mouse. The Cestus 335 is a curious amalgam of…

LET’S FACE IT, out of all the languages available, there’s a good argument that English is probably the weirdest of the bunch. It’s developed in a unique way. An amalgamation of a whole host of different cultures from across the globe, one that’s been influenced by war, emigration, empire building, culture absorption, religion, regional variance, and whatever words Shakespeare fancied making up to further his sonnets on the day. It’s odd, and its grammatical structures equally so, certainly compared to the Germanic and Nordic languages that form its basis. To write in it, then apply specific style guides to it is quite the challenge. It takes time, practice, and no small amount of effort. If you’re keen to advance in the prestigious field of the written word, it’s critical that…