Table of contents for March 2024 in Maximum PC

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SAMSUNG ANNOUNCED GDDR7 last summer, but now it has revealed more. The spec item that stands out is, rather obviously, peak transfer speeds of 37 Gb/s. More realistic throughput for commercial applications is likely to be in the region of 32 Gb/s. Micron also has GDDR7 brewing, and it’s claiming a 36 Gb/s target speed. SK Hynix, likewise, has chips nearing release, this time topping out at 35.4 Gb/s. For context, GDDR6 has been in mass production since 2018, the best versions of which can reach 24 Gb/s. All three manufacturers are likely to be cranking out GDDR7 chips in volume some time in the second half on this year, just in time for a new generation of GPUs. Nvidia usually uses Micron memory, while AMD uses Samsung or SK…

IF YOU THINK AI is everywhere already, it’s about to get even more pervasive. By summer, we’ll have the first swathe of AI PCs—systems with hardware AI acceleration. Windows will have a new update aimed at integrating AI into the heart of the OS, rather than a scattered feature set. Called update 24H2 (we have 24H1 to come this spring, first), the buzz was that Microsoft would mark the significance of the change by calling it Windows 12. Other sources, which have delved into Microsoft’s support documentation, can find no mention of ‘12’. Given that Windows 11 has yet to really establish itself as the leading version, and the fact that Windows 10 only has about a year of full support left, it seems that we will have to wait until…

PEOPLE, REJOICE—the RTX Super cards have arrived, and with them comes some nicely tweaked internal specs, better performance across some models, and to top it all off, some consistency in their price tags. What’s better than that, though? A super-sleek, stealthy, sexy, black founder’s edition graphics card from Nvidia, that’s what. There’s not a peep of RGB lighting on this little beauty. Nvidia really has come out of the gate swinging with its Super FE cards. You still get that same passthrough fan design throughout, the same 12VHPWR power cable location, and the same form factor as before (although bear in mind that this thing is far far far smaller than its RTX 4080 siblings), but most impressively, it’s that sleek mix of black metals and silver accents that really…

WITH MOBILE PROCESSORS from Intel, new graphics cards from Nvidia, and a whole host of monitors and laptops from everyone else, this CES had plenty of shiny new tech for us to get excited about. Let’s start with gaming laptops, which are getting thinner, lighter, and more portable than ever before; perfect if you’re looking for a machine that’s small and light enough to take into the office, but powerful enough to slay demons in Diablo at lunchtime. There were also a litany of new OLED monitors, which while still being on the pricey side, are at least going to be available in smaller sizes, so you no longer need a massive desk to accommodate one. Predictably, the buzzword of CES 2024 was AI, and entertainment could be had counting…

Any experienced internet user knows that BitTorrent is a protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing. BitTorrent trackers can provide a list of files available for transfer, and allow the client to find peer users, known as ‘seeds’, who may transfer the files using a specialized BitTorrent client. Given how efficient it is for sharing large files, it’s hardly surprising that BitTorrent accounts for around three percent of all internet traffic worldwide. Technically, you can access files via BitTorrent using your home computer, but it can cause complications, as connected peers can see your device’s IP address, you can be targeted by bad actors like hackers. As BitTorrent is sometimes used to share copyrighted files, some networks and ISPs also block or ‘throttle’ the protocol, making downloading directly to your machine more…

As your seedbox is effectively a server, many providers offer plans that support running your instance as a VPN server. Take the time to check through the ‘Applications’ section to discover popular software like OpenVPN Access Server and/or WireGuard. While generating public/private key pairs to establish a secure VPN connection isn’t difficult via the command line, most seedbox providers save you the hard work by setting up a dedicated subdomain to connect via your client, as well as a suitable. ovpn configuration file, in the case of OpenVPN. The main advantage of connecting to your seedbox via a VPN is that as your traffic is encrypted, anyone with access to your ISP’s record won’t know that you’ve connected to your seedbox, nor what type of content you’re accessing, like streaming video.…

YOU’LL NEED THIS TIME AND A REASONABLE BUDGET WHEN THE INDOMITABLE Barry Collins traveled to Lenovo HQ in North Carolina last year on Maximum PC’s behalf, he discovered that despite promises of plant-based PCs, bamboo packaging, and vegan-friendly covers, mass-producing green computers is tough. We applaud Lenovo and other manufacturers’ efforts to reach for that rainbow, but it’s also up to each of us to reduce our own carbon footprint. With residential energy bills increasing in the US by around 14 percent in the past two years, it doesn’t take a flower child to see that having an energy-efficient PC makes sound financial sense, too. There are some obvious ways to be greener, including shutting down your PC when not in use. Still, if you’re operating a home server or…

No matter how much you tweak your hardware, if you have a resource-intensive operating system and apps, you won’t be doing all you can to save the planet or your wallet. Microsoft is currently working on a new ‘Energy Saver ' mode for Windows 11, though currently it’s only available in developer builds. On the other hand, the Linux operating system has long had a reputation for being extremely light on resources. This is partly due to the lack of bloatware inherent in FOSS (free and open-source software), though some versions of Linux like WattOS (pictured) are actually designed to be more energy efficient through using programs like the lightweight LXDE desktop environment. Naturally, Windows programs don’t run natively in Linux, but as desktop distros like Ubuntu have become more…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 10 OR 11 45 minutes WHEN USING COMMAND PROMPT, have you ever needed to list the contents of a folder or drive? If so, then the DIR command has you covered. At first glance, that’s all it can do—and in a less visually accessible way than File Explorer. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find ways in which DIR can play a more active role: use it to quickly perform file searches, generate file lists you can open and edit in any text editor, and even confirm that your precious files are safe when Windows refuses to load. Here, we’ll explain how to use this powerful tool. Note that whenever we use ‘yourname’, you should replace it with your name as it’s registered in your…

IT FEELS WEIRD saying this about a $599 graphics card, but yes, this is in fact the best budget GPU you can buy right now. The RTX 40 Super cards were announced at CES this year, and out of the lot, the RTX 4070 Super is arguably the most interesting of the bunch. We’re talking significantly more on-board hardware (albeit the same memory), a static RRP price tag (a lovely addition, given the current state of inflation), and better yet, killer performance at 4K. Is this the card to finally put the nail in 1080p’s coffin? It might just be. At this point in time, you’ll likely have read more than enough in these hallowed pages about Ada Lovelace, the Supers, and Nvidia’s progress over the last year and a…

WITH THE PERFORMANCE goodies like 6GHz transmissions and 320MHz data channels that Wi-Fi 7 has to offer, Netgear’s Nighthawk RS700S has the power to speed up just about any network. Easy to set up and modify, the tri-band RS700’s real worth is its throughput at mid-range distances, meaning that it’s a great upgrade for a modest-sized home (around 3,500 square feet). It can be expensive to join the cutting edge, however. At $700, it’s $100 more than the TP-Link Archer BE800, and is the same price as the Archer BE900, but lacks either’s physical info screens. Netgear’s Armor security is excellent and a free year is included, but it adds over $100 a year to ownership costs after that. The RS700S is unique when it comes to looks, with a…

GOOGLE HAS A NEW disclaimer when you fire up an Incognito session in its latest test version. It now states that ‘this won’t change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google’. The current release version still states simply, ‘Now you can browse privately, and other people who use this device won’t see your activity.’ Both warnings still tell you that your activity ‘might’ be visible by websites, employer or school, and your ISP. Why the subtle change? The original warning was the subject of a $5 billion class action lawsuit that held that the wording was misleading, and users could think they were running a genuinely private session, when actually activity was still being tracked. The case was launched in 2022, and…

WE’RE COMPARING this build directly to last issue’s Hydra mini system. There are some big differences between these two rigs, but as you can imagine, the big focal point from a hardware perspective on this one is the graphics card, and the bump from the RTX 4070 to the Super. There are some caveats to that, of course—in the case of the Hydra Mini build, we are running an Intel Core i7-14700K, a processor with notoriously potent single-core performance. Not only is that something AMD has historically struggled with, even with the very best of Ryzen, but it’s something that generally leverages itself well to improving graphical performance in-game. The one mitigating factor to that is that our testing is done entirely at 4K, which mostly alleviates the processor as…

TIP OF THE MONTH BRING BACK THE MEDIA OVERLAY Remember Windows 10’s media flyout box, in which you simply turned up the volume via the keyboard, and you got a nice little overlay telling you what media was playing at the time? Hate that it’s missing in Windows 11, despite it being promised and launching now for what feels like an eternity? Head to the Microsoft Store, and search for ModernFlyouts (Preview). Install that, and your media overlay will have returned! Huzzah! ZAK STOREY CONTRIBUTOR INTEL & AMD IN 2024 As a freelancer, I get to ply my trade across a number of titles. With that comes the opportunity to test a colossal amount of kit. One caveat is that every test I perform for every brand needs to have…

YOU’LL NEED THIS ELGATO STREAM DECK https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/welcome-to-stream-deck ELGATO MARKETPLACE https://marketplace.elgato.com STREAM DECK SOFTWARE https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/downloads ELGATO’S STREAM DECK is one of those devices that you don’t think you need, but then you get one and wonder how you ever lived without it. It’s more than just a macro keyboard, and combined with an extensive range of plugins and open-source devkits, its flexibility has been well documented. In fact, a significant number of companies have integrated it into their workflows too, most notably Virgin Atlantic, who utilize a fleet of them for all manner of automation and workflow simplification. We’re not focusing on that today, though; we’re going to be running you through how to set up your own little piece of Stream Deck majesty, and what you need to get started.…

LAST I CHECKED, those four words in bold up top there graced the front of each and every issue of Maximum PC. What they represent is this humble publication’s very ethos, its spirit, its soul. Maximum performance, with minimal… attached nonsense. It’s a mantra I’ve lived my tech journalism career by, and one that extends to the everyday too. Why do I bring this up? Simply put, I’m tired of the ongoing nonsense with architectures and chipsets. At the moment, plying my trade as a freelancer, I’m fortunate enough to be doing a lot of work with graphics cards, testing them for all manner of publications. For my test bed, I’m using an Intel Core i9-14900K and a Z790 motherboard of similar ilk, mostly due to the heavy single-core performance…

LENOVO HAS made a hypocrite of Maximum PC. Since this latest generation of gaming laptops rocking Nvidia RTX 40-series graphics chips first landed, we’ve been saying that only a fool would buy a notebook with an RTX 4090 in it. Yet, here we are, bigging up the Lenovo Legion 9i with precisely that GPU inside it, and despite the near $4,000 sticker price. That said, there’s a moderately more affordable model with an RTX 4080 that will likely deliver practically the same level of gaming performance. Hold that thought while we consider the Legion’s sturdy build quality. There’s no noticeable give to the chassis, and it all feels superbly engineered and robust. The composite top layer is delightfully tactile, too, as are the set of white ceramic key caps that come…

WELCOME TO THE second generation of OLED gaming monitors. Or should that be the third, as Asus is claiming? It depends on how you measure, but this new Asus monitor definitely moves the game on, courtesy of the latest LG OLED panel tech. The key question is whether LG can close the gap to Samsung’s QD-OLED tech for both outright full-screen brightness and brightness consistency. As for the PG34WCDM itself, it’s a 34-inch curved ultrawide model with 3,440 by 1,440 pixels, so the basic form factor isn’t novel. That said, at 240Hz, it’s a step up in terms of refresh rate from earlier 34-inch ultrawide OLED monitors. Meanwhile, Asus is quoting 0.03ms as a response time, which is standard OLED fare, if still pretty eye-popping compared to any LCD monitor.…

IF YOU’VE EVER wanted to build your own keyboard, then the Ducky ProjectD Outlaw65 is a simple and easy way to go about it. Included in this compact kit are most of the pieces required to build a mechanical keyboard from scratch, and a guarantee that every piece will fit together—you need only provide switches and keycaps. Why might you want to build your own keyboard when you can pay someone less for one that has already been made? Good question, and if you don’t already get why that might be appealing, I don’t have a particularly convincing answer for you. Beyond an opportunity to lube up all your stabilizers and switches before actually putting them inside your keyboard, or the option to customize often inaccessible layers, you mostly need…

THIS IS Gigabyte’s Aorus Gen5 12000 PCIe 5.0 SSD, second edition. We’re long past the days of paltry 7 GB/s; this is the real deal, full-fat 12GB/s sequential transfers at a queue depth of 32. Unlike the Crucial T700, there’s no masonic handshake required to get this beauty to sing at its advertised speeds. Slap a good heatsink on top of it (or the huge stock one it comes with), get that thing ripping and roaring, and you’re good to go. Gigabyte’s a bit of an interesting case when it comes to storage. For the longest time, it wasn’t particularly a field that the company excelled in. It was there, it had options available—usually budget SSD solutions and the like—but it was only when the industry shifted to PCIe 3.0…

TWO APPS that do the same thing, owned by the same company, that run on the same platforms and are even interoperable. It may seem strange that one hasn’t been closed down in favor of the other, but Microsoft has kept Skype and Teams running in parallel, keeping them separate through features and pricing plans. Both Skype and Teams can be used for online group meetings and video or voice calls, they have text chat facilities, screen sharing and file sharing, and are both free—to begin with, anyway. They also have similar user interfaces that appear to be converging as new updates arrive. Only one offers live streaming, however, and only one has digital whiteboards and breakout rooms that can be useful when giving presentations or trying to coordinate a large…

THIS TIME of the year, companies often put on a show for investors. For AMD, that means official confirmation that we’ll be getting Zen 5 consumer PC processors in 2024 with the Ryzen 9000-series. Not exactly a surprise, but it is good to know that plans are on track. Rumor had it that we would get the first models as soon as April, with the V-Cache variants following in the fall. That now looks optimistic. At the event, AMD representatives confirmed a launch in the second half of the year. Zen 5 is expected to be a fairly major redesign of the Zen 4 architecture rather than a respin, with better branch prediction, more L1 data cache, and six rather than four ALUs per core, plus other tweaks. It’ll use the…

THE ASSAULT OF THE DISCRETE graphic card market by Intel has been fairly leisurely. Its first-gen Arc Alchemist cards are cost-effective, and feature set is decent. But initial driver problems were legion. The latter has been addressed, but all we’ve seen in nearly two years are graphics cards that just about compete at the lower end of the market. The challenge for Intel’s second generation of GPUs is to raise the game. Enter Battlemage, with its Xe2-HPG architecture that is rumored to be at least as fast as the GeForce RTX 4070. Leaked slides show two GPUs with 150W and 225W power profiles. They feature new machine learning rendering technology, new memory subsystem with compression, and improved ray tracing. Xe2-HPG also uses a new structure for the Xe Vector Engines (XVEs),…

> Samba share > Keep Chromebook? > Recovery partition Inaccessible Pi share I’ve had a Plex server running on a Raspberry Pi for several years. I set up a shared folder on the server that I’ve been able to connect from my two Windows 10 computers so I can drop TV shows without having to pull the USB drives. I’ve now replaced my Windows 10 Pro laptop with two newer systems running Windows 11 Home and Pro, neither of which can connect to the share (the Windows 10 desktop can still connect). I can get as far as entering the Pi’s IP address into File Explorer—namely \\10.0.0.200—which prompts me for a username and password, but am told that it’s incorrect, even though it works fine in Windows 10. I checked…

CES WAS REMARKABLY QUIET this year for proper PC hardware launches. There was the odd smattering of products here and there, but generally speaking, only one of the leading players launched anything of merit, and it was Team Green who lit up the press with an interesting array of new product announcements, namely its newly refreshed and highly rumored Super series GPUs. There’s a grand total of three at launch, each one having dropped one week after the other in January. All three models represent some interesting adjustments to what were already solid, if expensive, cards. The RTX 4070 Super, for example, is the most aggressively altered card of the lot, jumping up from 5,888 CUDA cores to 7,168, along with more L2 cache, and a significant 20 percent boost…

NVIDIA MADE A MISTAKE. With the announcement of the RTX 4000 series, and our first look at the product line-up, there was one key product that didn’t quite hit the mark. A 12GB RTX 4080, with far less componentry than the stock RTX 4080, and therefor far less performance. The media and community were quick to latch on to that, and Nvidia unlaunched it before it even began. A quick rebadge and reboxing later, and the RTX 4070 Ti was born, complete with the same specs and 12GB. Yet still, massively underwhelming. This, ladies and gentlemen, then, is what the RTX 4070 Ti should have been: an evolution, if you will. A chance for Nvidia to right the wrongs of its past launch, albeit a year later, and give us…

If you’re running Windows 11, you can tweak your PC power settings. Go to Settings > System > Power and Battery to access these. Take a moment to read the ‘Energy Recommendations’ at the top of the screen to lower your carbon footprint. These usually include disabling the screensaver altogether, as well as powering off the screen after a set time, eg. three minutes. Windows will also suggest you let it adjust the power mode for ‘best efficiency. Click ‘Apply’ next to each suggestion to proceed. If you prefer to do things manually, return to the previous screen and select ‘Power Mode’ > ‘Best Power Efficiency.’ This reduces CPU clock speed and screen brightness. Dark desktop themes are more energy efficient. To make the switch, right click anywhere on the…

ASUS has updated its 13-inch 2-in-1 convertible laptop, the Asus ROG Flow X13, with the latest hardware. This means AMD’s Phoenix APU in full Ryzen 9 7940HS spec with eight cores and a pretty powerful integrated GPU. You can also opt for one of three Nvidia dedicated graphics chips: the GeForce RTX 4050, 4060, or 4070 mobile GPUs. Whatever graphics you go for, it outputs to a 13.4-inch display with a 2,560 by 1,600 pixel resolution and 165Hz refresh rate. It’s touch-enabled, with a 360-degree hinge that supports various modes. You can also option a more powerful GPU via the Asus XG Mobile external graphics box that hooks up courtesy of a dedicated I/O port, but that’s costly. The laptop is packaged into a slick and slim 1.3kg 13-inch chassis that’s…

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE a big monitor to make your PC look awesome, and this Prolite model from Iiyama does just that. Although not the biggest—there are 43-inch screens and expansive ultrawides, if you really want to show off—a 32-inch screen looks more imposing than a 28-inch model, and gives an appreciable increase in screen area, too. Around the back of the Prolite are three inputs—USB-C, DisplayPort, and HDMI—and a USB hub that offers KVM capability. This means that you can have a desktop PC connected to the DisplayPort, a laptop on the USB-C, and maybe a streaming stick in the HDMI, making for a versatile screen that’s ideal if you’re limited to just this. A pair of 3W speakers and a headphone socket round out the audio capabilities, and the…

THIS IS WHY benchmarking is important. From the outset, the Crucial T700 Pro 2TB looks like another incredible PCIe 5.0 drive at the cutting edge of what’s possible right now. It’s advertised with 12,000 MB/s sequentials, a big chunky heatsink to dissipate all that warmth, and a slick design, too. Combine that with 2TB of storage at a more than affordable $270, and it’s well on its way to being a dead-set winner. Except, it isn’t. Sadly, the CT2000T700SSD5 (catchy name, we know) doesn’t quite hit the same speeds as some other PCIE 5.0 drives right now. In fact, in our testing, it fell significantly under par in comparison. CrystalDiskMark’s sequential testing at a queue depth of 32 recorded read and write performance of just 7,084 and 6,841 MB/s respectively.…

YOU HAVE TO ADMIRE Rocksteady Studios for committing so thoroughly to the bit; for the ruthless efficiency with which the developer has burned down a corner of the DC Comics universe that it had spent a decade building up. The Arkhamverse has been torn asunder, its greatest heroes are gone, and its most memorable surviving villains locked inside the Hall of Justice as weapons vendors. A Crisis on Infinite Earths leaves surprisingly little room for the carnage to be undone in a Lazarus Pit as part of the ongoing live service story, or whatever new adventures may eventually lay beyond it. It’s captivating to see a prominent studio take such a wild swing with a licensed intellectual property. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League tasks you with completing an impossible…