PC Gaming
Float like a butterfly, look like a bee at a glance (+) Honey-baked HamSurprising roominess; lots of cooling options; pleasing aesthetics. (-) Breakfast SyrupPriced on the high side; handle can obstruct CPU coolers. Performance enthusiasts like big stuff. Big cases, big videocards, big monitors. But we also enjoy the challenge of fitting a lot into…
Top Deal: Why put up with screen tearing and stuttering during game play if you don’t have to? If you’re rocking an old monitor that stinks for gaming, it’s time to kick that LCD (or CRT, if it’s really old) to the curb and get something new. And if you want buttery smooth game play,…
Aggressive pricing We have good news and we have bad news. Starting with the bad, it doesn’t look like any of AMD’s forthcoming Radeon 300 series graphics card will feature the company’s Fiji GPU with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Instead, it looks as though AMD is tweaking and rebadging existing cards. That’s a bummer, but…
Nvidia’s Maxwell generation hits a sweet spot at a glance (+) Aces of Spades Great price-performance ratio; runs cool and quiet; power-efficient. (-) Snake Eyes AMD’s Omega drivers steal some thunder. One of the nice things about PCs is that your budget has a wide range of entry points. If you don’t need the heavy…
Mac wants to be taken seriously as a gaming platform Apple seems to be interested in making the Mac a more viable gaming platform. We’re reading a bit between the lines to arrive at that conclusion, but it makes sense, considering the Cupertino company has baked its own Metal API into the next version of…
The Doctor tackles busted coolers, bad GPUs, and PCs in need of some cleaning Busted Frozr Doc, I’ve got an aging Nvidia GTX 570 card from MSI that came with a Twin Frozr II cooler. While considering the possibility of either an upgrade or SLI configuration, I noticed the temperatures on my GPU were getting…
A Pandora for larger builds BitFenix introduced its Pandora case last September, a stylish and compact case for smaller builds. Some users complained that it was too compact and pleaded with BitFenix to construct a bigger version for more meatier builds, and that’s what they did. Meet the Pandora ATX, a much larger version that…
Plain English, please! Let’s be real, few of us take the time to actually read through long and boring service agreements, and many of us skip privacy statements until someone raises hell on the Internet that a company has overstepped its bounds. Maybe that will change for users of Microsoft’s various services once the Redmond…
at a glance (+) BratwurstHigh performance; minimal noise; pleasing aesthetics. (-) Veggie DogRelatively expensive; a little on the husky side. Feet firmly planted in Serious Business territory Nvidia’s new Maxwell generation of video cards breaks down into two categories: the GTX 970 and GTX 980. As its numbering implies, the 970 is the less-expensive and…
The Doctor answers your questions about gaming mobos, multiple GPUs, boot delays, oversized towers, and home-brew PCs Life in the Fast Lanes I’m a gamer looking to upgrade soon. I’m running an Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4GHz with a Corsair H55 liquid cooler on an Asus P8Z68-V Pro mobo, with 32GB RAM, 1TB HDD,…