Table of contents for October 2023 in Maximum PC

GETTING HDR to work on games can be a bind, as you need a compatible monitor, graphics system, and software, and then make sure the various versions work together. Samsung has a fix, called HDR10+. It’s been around since 2018, but now we have the HDR10+ Gaming Standard, which, given compatible games, should make it all just happen. The standard involves a layer of metadata that gets all the moving parts to cooperate and includes real-time communication for optimization. If a game is compatible and your hardware can run HDR, it should give you the richer colors, deeper shadows, and better contrast of HDR. Sounds good, but for now it’s limited to a small number of Samsung monitors. The only compatible game is a free-to-play shooter called The First Descendant,…

IN 2017, AMD released Threadripper, a monster of a Zen-powered chip sporting up to 16 cores. If you wanted to build the ultimate in desktop rigs there wasn’t much that could touch it. It had more PCIe lanes and was cheaper and faster than anything Intel could field for the HEDT market. Since then, Threadrippers have moved upmarket, with Pro versions appearing in 2020 with Zen 2 cores. Then the 5900-series, using Zen 3 architecture was all Pro, all OEM, and aimed at workstations. Intel also abandoned the HEDT arena as potent high-end desktop chips killed the whole scene. AMD has a new Zen 4 Threadripper, opening a new range with the Threadripper Pro 7995WX, and once again it’s a stormer. It’s based on the silicon for the EPYC Genoa…

IN THESE DAYS of password breaches and encroaching government agencies, how much do you trust any third party with your data? Cloud storage is baked into Windows with Microsoft’s OneDrive, but despite the generous 1TB of storage space with any subscription, how sure can you be that your data is truly beyond the reach of bad actors? If you’d rather not trust the internet with your precious data, Nextcloud Hub is the solution for you. It offers the same features you find in any good cloud storage solution—backup and synchronization between all your devices—but goes further to add a secure self-hosted chat platform as well as private solutions for your contacts, calendar, and projects, all of which can be accessed on your phone as well as your desktop and laptop.…

YOU’LL NEED THIS MKVTOOLNIXGUI Your Swiss army knife for editing, splitting and merging video files. Optional extras include BOX4 to remux your outputted MKV files back to MP4 after editing them WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR MEDIA streaming toolkit, make sure you leave space for MKVToolNixGUI. There is MakeMKV for ripping discs and Handbrake for converting them to space-saving (and universally compatible) formats, but what happens when you want to perform surgery on a file? MKVToolNixGUI is the operating knife you need to splice, dice, and edit the attributes of your media files. Despite the name, MKVToolNixGUI can import most popular video formats. Not only can you combine files into one single video or split a video into separate files, but you can edit their properties, rename commentary audio and subtitle…

YOU’LL NEED THIS MEGA ACCOUNT New Zealand-based cloud storage provider with generous 20GB free limit. APPLE HAS JUST HIKED THE PRICE OF ICLOUD+. The online storage service, which helps sync your iPhone and iPad with Windows, is still free if you use 5GB or less, but beyond that 50GB costs $0.99 a month, 200GB costs $2.99 and, if you need the maximum of 2TB, it’s $9.99. Apple increased those prices in June by up to 29 per cent, rising from $0.79, $2.49, and $7.99 respectively. Granted, iCloud+ offers more than just storage, also giving you automatic photo backups, custom email addresses and more (see full pricing options at support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238), but not everyone needs all of those features. If that’s left you wondering whether you could find cloud storage for free…

SAMSUNG AND LG dominate the OLED TV market and that contest for the ages is now making its way onto the PC. Every OLED gaming monitor you can currently buy uses either a Samsung or LG panel. So far, we’ve preferred Samsung-based screens, primarily on account of their superior full-screen brightness and reduced tendency to exhibit automatic brightness limiter-induced weirdnesses. That bodes well for the hot new Samsung Odyssey OLED G9. If anyone can make the most of a Samsung OLED panel, it’s surely Samsung itself. In rough terms, it’s much like the numerous 34-inch 21:9 aspect OLED monitors that use Samsung panel technology, just on an even wider scale. So, you get the same 1,440 vertical resolution and 109dpi pixel density, but the 32:9 aspect ratio takes the horizontal…

THIS A LOVELY LAPTOP. It’s the very epitome of Razer’s superbly refined and surprisingly restrained notebook design ethos. We love the 14-inch form factor, too. This smaller scale makes the Blade 14 a laptop that can be equally at home both as your home gaming machine and your daily driver office notebook. The catch? It simply isn’t good value. It’s just so damned expensive for the core components and the resulting performance. Take the Acer Predator Helios 16, with one of the best displays in any gaming laptop. That’s a $2,300 machine. Or how about the excellent Lenovo Legion Pro 7i? That’s a $2,500 system, and one you could find for just $2,200 over the recent summer sales period. And the Razer Blade 14? $2,700 buys you an AMD Ryzen…

ROLE-PLAYING VIDEO GAME GATHER YOUR PARTY, folks, because Baldur’s Gate III is finally upon us. A whopping 23 years after the Bhaalspawn and their buds took a trip to Athkatla in Baldur’s Gate II, we're back in the Sword Coast slaughtering goblins, getting spooked by mind flayers, and spewing out magic missiles. And even for a jaded old hack like your current correspondent, returning to old stomping grounds is an absolute blast. No question, this is an absurdly impressive CRPG. As I've fought, stolen, and sang—yes, I'm a Bard—my way through the Forgotten Realms, it’s felt like I've been playing the Greatest Hits: the best parts of Ultima, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin—all the heavy hitters. Rather than being a…

TRIUMPHS TELEPORT BOX Proto built a cabinet that displays 3D holographic images, dubbed ‘holoportation’, and used William Shatner to promote it. EXTINCT WORM LIVES ON They died out 46,000 years ago, but scientists have thawed out nematodes in permafrost. FIFTH FORCE Scientists working on the Muon g-2 project claim they have evidence of a fifth fundamental force that could change physics. TRAGEDIES AI READS PASSWORDS AI can read your password by listening to keystrokes from a recording. Is nothing safe? INCEPTION FIX SLOWS ZEN The microcode used to fix the vulnerability in Zen chips can hit some applications hard—28-54 percent in some cases. TESLA RANGE EXTENDER A new class action claims Tesla misrepresents a vehicle’s range by deliberately not taking some variables into account.…

TSMC WAS THE FIRST CHIP FABRICATOR to build 3nm process silicon late last year, and Apple was its first customer. That partnership has grown, and now Apple has ordered so much 3nm silicon that it will be over a year before there will be excess capacity for any other customers. The deal, which cost Apple around $17bn, means it will be the only company offering TSMC’s 3nm chips in its hardware for some time. The first of many 3nm chips will appear this fall in a round of updates to the M-series processors. Of most interest is the M3 Ultra, the chip destined for the Mac Pro and Mac Studio. It puts together two M3 Max chips into one die with up to 80 GPU cores, 24 performance cores, and…

DLSS ORIGINALLY STOOD FOR ‘Deep Learning Super Sampling’ but since its introduction in 2018, Nvidia has used it as an umbrella term for any graphics technology that leverages AI. Now, Nvidia has introduced Ray Reconstruction and DLSS 3.5, which will use AI to improve the quality of ray tracing effects. So how does Ray Reconstruction work and who benefits? The second part is much easier to answer. DLSS 3.5, unlike DLSS 3.0 Frame Generation, will work with any and all Nvidia RTX GPUs. That makes the new features potentially far more interesting than if they were only limited to the latest generation RTX 40-series hardware. Ray Reconstruction only benefits games that use ray tracing effects, so if you’re playing a game that only uses rasterization, DLSS 3.5 has nothing to…

> Gaming emulation > Save bricked router > Foolproof Mac boot EmulationStation DS query I was intrigued by your mention of EmulationStation DS in your retro-gaming feature. I set up Batocera Linux as per your instructions, love the ES user interface, and I’d like to replicate that on my PC. Is it really such a hassle to set up the DS version in a standard Windows installation? —Jon R Hurst THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: The biggest issue with the DS build of EmulationStation (ES) is that you must install and configure RetroArch, the underlying tool powering your various emulators, separately. There’s a lot of configurability beneath the hood, and it’ll take some trial and error to get things working the way you want them to. However, as a quick guide, start by…

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1996 WAS A GREAT YEAR. Major League Soccer came to the US for the first time, and the N64 was released in Japan and the USA. It’s also the year that brilliant Microsoft and US Robotics employees helped to create PPTP (Point to Point Tunneling Protocol), birthing the very first VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). The original idea was that employees working remotely could securely ‘dial in’ to their corporate network to access resources. This meant any internet connected computer could effectively become a part of any intranet. PPTP has since been superseded, but the basic mechanics of modern VPNs are much the same—the ‘client’ creates an encrypted ‘tunnel’ to a VPN server, through which they can then access the network and the internet. Recent years have seen the rise of…

YOU’LL NEED THIS THUNDERBIRD The latest version (115.0) is compatible with Windows 7 onwards and most versions of Linux, provided you have at least a 1GHz Intel/AMD CPU and 1GB of RAM PC LOVERS ARE SPOILED for choice when it comes to email clients, so it’s strange that so many just stick with the programs that come bundled with their OS. Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform email client, originally developed via the Mozilla Foundation (of Firefox fame). As it’s funded by user donations, you can rest assured that Thunderbird won’t spam you with ads or train AI on your personal emails. Its UI is incredibly clean and easy to follow, plus you’ll find that setup is a breeze. Aside from supporting email, the client can also help you manage…

IN THIS JOB, half the fun is playing with cutting-edge kit, the latest CPUs and GPUs with the most advanced silicon in the world. But thanks to AI, I’ve got a feeling that’s not going to be the case for much longer. The problem is that there’s just too much money to be made from inferencing chips for AI. It’s recently been alleged, for instance, that it costs Nvidia about $3,000 to bang out its new H100 AI inferencing GPU. But it’s sold to customers for something in the region of $25,000 to $30,000, depending on who is paying and how many they’re buying. As Nvidia’s Jensen Huang recently said, the more you buy, the more you save. Anyway, Nvidia says it expects to ship roughly 550,000 H100 GPUs this…

WE’VE BEEN LOOKING to get our hands on a Skytech PC ever since the Ontario-based system builders rocked up on the scene with supremely affordable pre-built gaming PCs. These machines absolutely ace the bang-for-buck thing. Question is, does that come with corner cutting? Core specs-wise, we’re talking RTX 4070 for graphics and AMD’s slightly elderly Ryzen 5 5600X doing CPU duties. Skytech could have slapped an AIO cooler on the CPU, but with a max CPU temp of 67.4 °C in our testing, there’s not much to complain about. When you’re splashing out $1,600, it’s not unreasonable to expect a nonstock cooler, though. Thankfully that’s what we’ve got, albeit not the nice RGB faceplate on the cooler you’ll see on Skytech’s website. So far, so good. However, when it comes…

THE AOKZOE A1 PRO is a handheld gaming PC in the mold of the Asus ROG Ally, sporting essentially the same excellent AMD processor and a bigger screen, but without some of the restrictive Asusness. Does that make this the ultimate gaming handheld? Or should that be the ultimate Windows-powered handheld? Before the Steam Deck launched, there were plenty of handheld rigs to choose from, but they all suffered from substandard integrated graphics. With the release of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme and Ryzen 7 7840U APU twins, things have taken a dramatic turn for the better. That was first proven by the Asus ROG Ally, but that was only 1080p. The new AOKZOE A1 Pro ups the ante to 1200p thanks to its 16:10 aspect display. The AMD Ryzen…

BUILT AROUND Drop’s ENTR mechanical keyboard, the Lord of the Rings Dwarven edition speaks to us deeply, with each press of its keys resounding like drums. Drums in the deep. But the most pertinent question for slightly less pathological Tolkien pupils is this: What price are you willing to pay for something that, while studded with impeccable artwork, is essentially a rather basic keyboard underneath that Dwarvish facade? Hold that thought—we’ll come back to it. Each keycap is either lovingly decorated with thematic Dwarvish iconography by Oshetart, or spread with Khuzdul phrases, such as the space bar’s Dwarven battle cry, “The axes of the dwarves! The dwarves are upon you!” Each letter key also suggests a dwarven equivalent legend or two, though the accuracy of the board’s Cirth legend has…

OUR BUDGET MACHINES may not be the best of the bunch, but the fact you can piece together a whole machine costing around two-thirds of the price of just one 4090 is crazy. And that whole machine is capable of 1080p gaming on ultra settings too—it’s a whole lot better value for money. After our previous two budget builds, we decided it was time to bring some new components into the mix. Our recent Intel and AMD cover build proved they could game at 1080p ultra, so we added those GPUs into both builds. While the Intel Limited Edition Arc A750 8GB can game at 1080p, the RTX 4060 we tested recently does so at much higher frame rates. With the help of DLSS 3.0, we reached over 200fps on…

LARGE-SCALE AI PROJECTS are the hot thing of the moment as every big tech company and hopeful start-up scrambles to build AI systems. Those systems need chips, and the best for training LLMs is Nvidia’s H100 Tensor Core GPUs. The success of a new AI project is measured by how many AI cards you can bring to the party. A large project, such as ChatGPT, needs around 50,000 cards. Projects from Google, Meta, and Microsoft will need similar amounts. Start-ups will need 10,000 or so each. This is good news for Nvidia, and it is expected to sell over half a million H100 GPUs this year. Its cards sell for at least $30,000 each. Demand is such that they reach a $10,000 premium on eBay. Profit margins on GPUs aren’t spectacular,…

IN A SIMILAR VEIN as last issue, we wanted to tackle the same MO but switch from Team Blue to Team Red. That’s right, we’re moving to the AMD side of the fence with this build, but sticking with the sub-$1,000 budget. This gives you the latest AMD GPU, a very competent budget friendly AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU, and plenty of RGB lighting. The latter is the least important, especially if you’re sticking to a budget, but it’s a good way of adding to a room’s theme. You can change the lighting to suit your needs, and if you aren’t a fan of the Rainbow Road from Mario Kart aesthetic, don’t worry—we aren’t either. We prefer keeping the lights to a static color or, if feeling adventurous, we might push the…

MOORE’S LAW is dead. So says no less an authority on the subject than Nvidia CEO and leather jacket aficionado Jensen Huang (pictured below). Actually, Huang has been composing Moore’s Law’s obituary since at least 2017, when he expressed doubts over its long-term viability at the GPU Technology Conference in Beijing. Then at CES in 2019, Hunag unambiguously decreed “Moore’s Law isn’t possible anymore.” It was last year during a Q&A to promote the then-hot new RTX 4090 GPU that Huang figuratively unloaded the final cap, simply saying “Moore’s Law is dead.” But here’s the thing. If you plot the transistor count of cutting-edge chips right up to the present day, it doesn’t seem like there’s been any slowdown in technological progress. But surely Huang knows what he is talking…

TIP OF THE MONTH FOCUS SESSIONS With so many distractions from news alerts, text messages, and social media, keeping your concentration is hard. However, there’s a feature in Windows 11 that could help. Focus Sessions minimizes distractions by turning on Do Not Disturb. You’ll see a focus timer on the screen, taskbar apps won’t alert you, and badge notifications will be hidden. To enable this, go to Start > Settings > System > Start focus session and stay in the zone. MAKE – USE – CREATE A QUICK SPRUCE UP I’ve been on a mission recently to clear out clutter and tidy up my personal spaces. It felt as if I only had to take one step into my office for a mess to happen. For a place where I…

YOU’LL NEED THIS CHROME OR EDGE, UBLOCK ORIGIN OR ADBLOCK (free) Your choice of browser and favored ad blocker YOUTUBE RECENTLY STARTED testing a three-strikes policy for viewers who use ad blockers on its website. If it detects that you have one installed, it will give you three chances to disable the tool before it blocks you from watching any videos. This strict new policy is intended to discourage us from using ad-blocking extensions such as uBlock Origin (ublockorigin.com) and instead subscribe to ad-free YouTube Premium for $13.99 a month. But Google is far from the only company to clamp down on ad blockers, and many sites now insist that you disable yours before you can access their content. Here, we explain how to block ads without being blocked yourself.…

WHEN YOU IMAGINE a typical external SSD, ‘compact’ and ‘palm-sized’ aren’t the first things that come to mind. For most of their existence, these storage devices have been rather brick-like and rudimentary in their design, however, with its new XS1000 SSD, Kingston has reduced the SSD to the bare minimum. From floppy disks to ultra-portable drives with thousands of times more capacity, the world of storage technology is moving rapidly. So, are the days of inconveniently slow file transfers and corruption finally over? And is Kingston’s latest iteration of a portable external hard drive the shape of things to come? The XS1000 certainly embraces the XS part of its title. This thing is tiny, almost adorably so. Measuring just 2.73x1.28in, it’s more like an 8GB USB thumb drive than a typical…

HERE AT MAXIMUM PC, we like devices of a large stature. We like them fast as well, and Asus’s enormous router fulfills all our needs. This is a Wi-Fi 6E router with six Ethernet ports and a startling array of leg-like antennas sprouting from the edges of its casing. It’s so large that it’s like a PC in its own right, and is certainly an eye-catching sight. There’s a translucent panel on top of the casing that’s highly reflective when it’s dormant, but once the router comes alive, it lights up in a flurry of logos and LEDs. Finding a home for this unit that keeps it close enough to the source of a fast data connection, and yet doesn’t keep the family awake all night, is going to be…

HOW YOU HOLD your mouse can be as personal to you as your fingerprints. Mountain’s Makalu Max comes with a host of customization options, meaning it appears to be well suited to a range of different hand sizes and grips. This strategy of user customization is what has made the company’s keyboards so successful, after all. We really want to like the Makalu Max. And most of the time, we really do. It’s got a classic PixArt sensor, offering up to 19,000dpi should you need such a level of sensitivity, but it also comes with interchangeable weights. That’s not hugely innovative on its own—many other mice have done this in the past—but few have gone with the sort of weights that enable you to balance that weight around different areas…

FIRST, let’s address the elephant in the room. There is one app that has come to dominate the world of desktop publishing, and that is Adobe InDesign. If you’re working for a company that uses InDesign, there’s no point having anything else. The same goes for QuarkXPress, the former leading light in the industry that has been somewhat eclipsed by the rise of Adobe’s app. It’s the same argument that has been put forward for Photoshop or Premiere Pro. If the entire workflow for your project—which involves lots of other people collaborating—is built on Adobe software, then you need Adobe software. Substituting for something else will probably cause the whole thing to collapse. However, if you’re not running or working for a graphic design company, but want something you can…