Budget Game PC September 2014

The Hardware.Info Budget Game PC Advice has a balanced configuration for playing video games, without having to spend too much. The components have been selected to offer the best bang for your buck.

That means you cannot always expect the highest settings, resolution and frame rate, but at the same time you should be able to play all modern games in Full HD resolution without making huge concessions to either the image quality or your enjoyment of the game.

Hands-on review: Asus Zenbook UX305

Asus unveiled the UX305, its newest flagship laptop at IFA 2014 this week. The device, it claims, is the world's thinnest 13-in QHD+ ultrabook, giving it one of the highest pixel densities of any computers on the market.It faces competition from the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro and the Samsung ATIV Book 9 as well as the Apple MacBook Pro Retina Display, although we expect vendors to refresh their current thin-and-light laptop range very soon.

Intel X99 Motherboard Goes Up in Smoke For Reasons Unknown

This morning I woke up bright and early to benchmark some DDR4 memory kits and found myself waking up not to Folgers in your cup, but the smell a burnt electrical after loading the XMP profiles on a memory kit and restarting the system. Let me tell you what happened, the best I can.

On Friday I spent the day wrapping up the benchmarks on the Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 16GB (4x4GB) 3000MHz quad-channel memory kit (part number HX430C15PBK4/16) that runs at 1.5V. This morning I wanted to get another kit of DDR4 memory tested, so the system was powered down, the CMOS was reset and a G.Skill 16GB (4x4GB) 3000MHz memory kit (F4-3000C15Q-16GRR) and powered up the system. It posted fine, so I went into the UEFI and set it to run at the only XMP profile on the kit. The UEFI changes were Saved and the system restarted. It was during the next seconds that both the board and the processor would be killed off in a rather unspectacular death. The system came up, hung for a very short time and then powered off with a audible click of the Corsair AX860i power supply. If you’ve ever heard the loud click of the Over Current Protection (OCP) shutting down the PSU you know exactly what click I heard. Now when I press power button on the motherboard the system clicks after being on for a split second. I unplugged all the cables on the power supply and did the built-in self-check and it passed with flying colors. I still swapped out the PSU with a backup Corsair AX860i and the same click was to be heard. and it’s doing the same thing (Corsair AX860i). After clearing the CMOS, removing the memory, SSD and video card the system still wouldn’t post. At that point in time I switched to a non-digital power supply (Corsair AX1200) and it did the same thing although this time the OCP took a little longer to kick in. There was some audible crackling noises, followed by some smoke near the CPU VRM heatsink. So, the heart shattering smell of burnt electronics filled the room and I knew my day wasn’t going to be a good one.

My Core i7 5960X + MSI X99 Experience So Far: It's Smoking, Really

This weekend I was planning to publish the first Linux benchmarks for Intel's incredibly powerful Core i7 5960X Haswell-E processor with X99 motherboard and DDR4 system memory. Unfortunately, all I can tell you now is that it's smoking, quite literally!

The testing has unfortunately been delayed again since when powering up the X99 motherboard for the first time, it had a quick flame and then smoke from two locations. The motherboard in question was the MSI X99S SLI Plus.

At the end of August, Intel released the Core i7 5960X Haswell-E processor that has eight physical cores plus Hyper Threading to yield a total of sixteen threads. The CPU has a 3.0GHz base frequency and up to 3.5GHz Turbo Frequency, 20MB Smart Cache, 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, and ushers in DDR4 memory to the desktop with having DDR4-2133MHz support. By all indications this is an incredible beauty albeit pricey with a retail price currently above $1,000 USD.

SilverStone EB01-E and EB03 DAC/Headphone Amplifier Review

What do teenage girls do together when they hang out? While I am neither teenage (anymore) nor a girl (born this way), chances are they like to gossip about their friends, talk about what shampoo they use, go shopping, and most importantly of all, take selfies. Up until two months ago, I have had a hard time understanding the point of the last item on the list. It was absolutely mind blowing how, with everything against tradition, the photographer is also the subject of the photo. Earlier last month, I began to understand the merits of this practice. I mean, when you hang out with friends, you want to take a picture together, right? And you want to be in the photo too, right? The easiest way to do it is to take a selfie. Now, being a complete noob at this stuff, whenever I wanted a selfie, I just passed my phone along to some girl to do the job. My plan worked pretty well for about a week, until I kept asking the same person to do every time, who became quite annoyed and told me to learn to take selfies on my own instead. After receiving a few tips and tricks from my fellow experts, and about ten minutes of awkwardly practicing when no one was looking, I finally got the whole deal sorted. Since then, I was hooked. I took selfies with my friends, parents, coworkers, and even my former supervisor... in his office. As you can see here, as ridiculous as something sounds, sometimes, you just got to try something new to know why it is so awesome. Today, we will take a look at the SilverStone EB01-E DAC and EB03 headphone amp. If it sounds ridiculous why anyone would cough up $400 of cash and pass their sound through two big metal boxes instead of plugging their headphone directly into the back of their PC for free, you will have to read this review to see why true audiophiles have been rocking equipment like these for years.

SPYRUS WorkSafe Pro WTG Secure Flash Drive Review

Our review of the SPYRUS WorkSafe Pro Windows To Go Secure Flash Drive marks the world’s first independent report of the SPYRUS encrypted flash drive, a flash drive that would most definitely suit the like of James Bond. It brings to end a period of over two years of discussions and final agreement on exactly what could (or could not be) shown and discussed with respect to this drive. As much as our report of the SPYRUS cannot zone in on such things as component closeups, hardware specifics, or even some of the information that might normally be discussed in such a hardware build, we trust you will be just as amazed as we are at what is easily the worlds most advanced and secure hard drive.

The Sims 4 review: Halfway house

New "emotions" system shines, but what are our Sims supposed to play with?