WINDOWS 8’S MODERN interface didn’t go over well out of the gate. Although the live tiles and touch-friendliness offered a lot to like, usability experts panned many of the design choices, and power users felt abandoned. But beyond bridging the gap between PC and tablet, Windows’ immersion in the interface formerly known as Metro may … Read more
Aerocool www.aerocool.us B est-case scenario, most enclosures you buy today will include one intake fan installed in the front panel and an exhaust fan in the rear panel, with some foregoing the intake fan entirely to reduce the price tag as much as possible. But if you’re building a powerful PC, you’re going to need … Read more
We’ve always had a fondness for power supplies that offer variety when it comes to cabling, such as cables of different lengths and lots of options for SATA and Molex connectors. So when we saw the unprecedented assortment of cable options that be quiet! includes with the partially modular Dark Power Pro 10 750W, we … Read more
When it comes to motherboards, ASUS seems to be of the opinion that more is better. (For the record, that’s just fine with us.) The MAXIMUS VI FORMULA is a perfect example. This Z87-based motherboard is overflowing with features, including a set of threaded fittings to install liquid- cooling barbs on the VRM heatsink, digital … Read more
ROG Poseidon GTX 780 ASUS www.asus.com/us W e’ve often lamented the fact that our GPUs, which tend to run extremely hot, get treated like second-class citizens when it comes to easy exotic cooling. Yes, you can install an aftermarket waterblock and add the graphics card to your custom loop. That’s a pricey proposition, though, and … Read more
The BRIX Pro is an ultra- compact PC kit that’s similar in size and design to Intel’s NUC (Next Unit of Computing) barebones kit, which we reviewed in the March issue. The big difference between these small machines is the processing power of each. Intel’s units feature CPUs that you’d typically find in Ultrabooks (the … Read more
TBS Technologies is known primarily as a manufacturer of digital TV tuners that you can add to your PC. With the Matrix, TBS is branching out to the single-board PC market. The Matrix can work with the TBS’ USB TV tuners (as you might guess) to extend its functionality as an HTPC. It’s capable of … Read more
Transforming The Workstation. The use of GPUs to perform high- end compute workloads has ex- ploded in recent years. Their parallel nature and access to large amounts of fast memory make them well-suited to compute-intensive engineering operations such as 3D design, sim- ulation, and visualization, as well as content creation tasks like capturing high-definition media, … Read more
INTEL’S NEW 730 Series of enthusiast-class SSDs come emblazoned with the image of a skull, but they don’t fully live up to a killer image. The company shipped a pair of 480GB drives to us so we could benchmark them striped as a single volume in RAID 0, which is how a PC enthusiast might … Read more
Andy Shaw tests a Hi-Fi that will make your music sound great, whether it’s on a CD, phone or tablet. M ost music is now purchased digitally and stored on phones and tablets. But there are still plenty of us who own CD collections we can’t live without and still want to play. This compact … Read more
The ultimate combination of form, function and fashion. The dream of wearing an Apple device is not a new one. From iPod armbands to nano bracelets, there have been plenty of solutions over the years if you don’t want to be sat at a desk or reaching into your pocket all day long. But few … Read more
A CrunchBang derivative for the Raspberry Pi? Les Pounder fires up the community created distribution to investigate. W hen Crunchbang Linux came on to the Linux scene in 2008 it ushered in an era of lightweight Linux distributions for all types of machines that had previously been left unloved. The use of the Openbox window … Read more