Table of contents for October 2021 in APC

Intel’s Architecture Day 2021 was full of deep-dive disclosures, with this year’s topics focusing on the architectural details of the company’s forthcoming Alder Lake CPUs that will span from the desktop PC down to ultra-mobile applications by combining two types of cores in a hybrid design, a first for an x86 desktop PC chip. However, unlike other Arm hybrid designs we’ve seen that are tuned for power efficiency, Intel has tuned its Alder Lake chips for the highest performance possible. Intel claims that Alder Lake’s high-performance cores come with an average 19 percent IPC improvement over the Rocket Lake chips, marking the fastest high-performance core the company has built, and that its new efficiency core offers up to five times the power efficiency of Skylake. Intel’s Alder Lake also supports…

We haven’t always been fans of Asus’s various avant garde placements of additional screens on its laptops, but one space it definitely works well is on the Duo. The Duo UX482 incorporates a 12.65-inch IPS-level screen above the keyboard, making use of what is generally a lot of dead space with a useful second screen. The ScreenPad Plus attaches to the hinge mechanism to tilt seven degrees up off the keyboard, to line up more seamlessly with the main screen. Whether you’re gaming or working, this additional viewing space is amazingly convenient, allowing you to keep track of things that would usually happen offscreen. The main 14-inch display on the Duo UX482 has a pretty standard 1,920 x 1,080 pixel resolution, but it is brighter than most, with a 400nit…

We’ve long been fans of Phanteks cases, with them seeing regular appearances in our PC Builder section. Today we’re looking at a great mid-ranged option, the Eclipse P500a Airflow D-RGB. There are three P500a models, with the basic non-RGB model going for a very reasonable $159. Today though, we’re looking at the up-tiered D-RGB model, which is available in black or white. The D-RGB model adds a trio of 140mm D-RGB Phanteks-brand fans mounted at the front, as well as a D-RGB plug to connect to your motherboard. Most usefully – there’s a button on the top that cycles through colours and modes – which is unbelievably convenient if your stars align and other RGB devices connect and can also be cycled this way. RGB software sucks, a dumb button…

$279 | www.msi.com Along with the high-end MSI Spatium M480 comes a more value-oriented option, the M470. Where the M480 goes for all out performance, the M470 is more of a mainstream offering, giving away a bit of sequential performance without losing much in the way of real world performance or responsiveness. Like its big brother, the M470 is a standard form factor 2280 (80mm length) M.2 drive. It makes use of Toshiba’s 96-Layer TLC NAND and interestingly, Phison’s first generation PS5016-E16 controller. It also includes a 1GB DRAM buffer. The 1TB M470 we have in our labs for review is rated for 5,000/4,400 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The M470 doesn’t come with the optional heatsink of its M480 sibling. PCIe 4.0 drives can run hot so you’ll…

$350 | www.crucial.com The Crucial Ballistix RGB 2x16GB kit at DDR4-3600 with 16-18-18-38 timings can be considered a good ‘sweet spot’ kit. It’s not all that much more expensive than a mainstream DDR4-3200 kit, and there’s a slightly cheaper non-RGB version if you prefer a discrete look. Speaking of RGB, the Ballistix kit is very bright, at least compared to the Kingston kit, and the colours are especially vibrant and accurate. The heatspreaders do feel a little on the flimsy side – not that you need much cooling on a modern DDR4 kit, though. The Crucial performs well in the benchmark results. As DDR4-3600 sits near the upper limit of the Gear 1 ratio, you get the benefit of that low latency setting without the hit the G.Skill kit takes…

$549 | www.kingston.com Now here’s something a bit different. 11th Gen systems can clock memory higher than ever before, even well above 5000MHz in some cases. The Kingston Fury Renegade runs at a slightly saner 4600MHz at 1.5V with 19-26-26-46 timings. This puts it at a level where the Gear 2 latency penalty is mostly offset. Though whether a kit like this is suitable for you will be task dependent. The Renegade kit is very solidly built, with strong and hefty heatspreaders and a rather low intensity RGB implementation compared to other kits. It makes use of the Hynix DJR IC, which are the chips you’ll have seen used for many world record speed attempts. Running it at its XMP setting showed it to be competitive with the kits running…

macOS 10.12 or later | Free (IAPs) | ftp-mac.com Despite Finder’s advances, there are still Mac owners who feel it doesn’t go far enough. Commander One 3.0 is a versatile dual-pane solution with support for unlimited tabs, hotkey shortcuts, built-in Command Line bar, and FTP client that speeds up everyday tasks, and eliminates the need for third-party utilities. It also now directly accesses cloud storage services Google Drive, OneDrive, Mega, and pCloud, as well as Dropbox and Box. There’s now full support for Big Sur. The app remains Intel, although it installed and ran fine on our M1 MacBook Pro. Despite the claims of faster data transfer rates, we found the Apple silicon-enhanced Finder copied an 80GB Parallels VM to a USB 3-connected external SSD in just under three minutes…

Linux | https://ubuntu.com Ubuntu usually uses regular releases to introduce new developments that it hopes to stabilise by the time the next long-term release (LTS) rolls around. Yet despite the usual slew of updates, version 21.04 is rather light on show-stopping features. For desktop users, the only noteworthy new feature is the switch to the Wayland display server by default, for supported hardware. Some other distros, such as Fedora, have been using Wayland for a while now, but Ubuntu has delayed making the switch. Now that it has, the developers note that some programs, including Firefox and OBS Studio, will use Wayland for smoother graphics and better fractional scaling. Ubuntu tried using Wayland by default back with Ubuntu 17.10, before reverting to Xorg for subsequent releases. The X.Org session remains…

You’ve probably experienced the frustration of troubleshooting a problem that coincides with a recent installation or update, whether app, hardware, or Windows-related. Rather than waste time trying to track down a solution, why not roll your PC back to the moment before that problem started? This is where System Restore comes in; it’s Windows’ own snapshot-based backup system that only records system changes, enabling you to roll things back without affecting any other files. It’s not received much love in Win 10 – and may even have been disabled on smaller hard drives – but can still do a good job of undoing most system changes (with the exception of major feature updates). You can verify it’s switched on and roll back your PC from the same dialog box. Type…

YOU’LL NEED A PC with the correct CPU See Step 1 for details. Windows 11 is a handsome beast, reminiscent of Windows 10, yet still its own thing, with more to recommend it than a centered taskbar and rounded corners on its windows. Anyone on the Windows Insider Dev Channel will already have had a build of 11 arrive through Windows Update. It is, at the time of writing, quite stable, but is not exactly what you’d call feature-complete. Still, it makes an interesting thing to have in a virtual machine or installed on a spare PC so you can bring it out at parties and impress your friends. There’s a snag, however. It’s not yet implemented in the preview build, but Microsoft says this new OS will rely more…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to find and delete duplicate files YOU’LL NEED Parallels Toolbox for Mac ($27.99/year), macOS 10.12 or later It doesn’t take long to fill your Mac’s hard drive or solid-state drive with clutter. Old photos or work files can quickly take up hundreds of megabytes of precious storage space – take a look at your folder that contains email attachments, you’ll find that alone is taking up a surprising amount of GB. One common problem is that many of us tend to create duplicate versions of files that people send us – some photos from a friend, or a bunch of PDF files from a work colleague. There’s a tendency to automatically create duplicates of photos and files that we need, say,…

Not everyone has the desk space – never mind the finances – to afford the luxury of a dual-monitor setup. Adding a second display can, however, revolutionise the way you use your PC. Deskreen is a free application that provides a clever workaround to this problem, one that makes it possible for you to view multiple windows at once across additional displays without spending anything. Simply put, it enables you to convert other devices, including phones, tablets, laptops, and even smart TVs, into a secondary display for your computing tasks. This display can easily mirror your entire desktop so that you can monitor your PC remotely, or you can use it to view a specific program’s content alongside your main display. Armed with the right know-how (see the box, below),…

$44.95 | PC, XB1, XBS/X | curve-digital.com Along with thousands of other galactic migrants, your character in The Ascent pays a small fortune for a ticket to the planet Veles, looking for a better life. The moment you step off the ship, however, the price of the ticket becomes a debt so astronomical that you’ll immediately be burdened with working dirty, dangerous jobs to pay it off. The Ascent’s setting, a mix of neon-flecked ’80s cyberpunk and grimy science fiction, is magnificent. The story takes place in an Arcology – a self-contained city squeezed into an immense skyscraper. Think Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, crossed with Akira’s Neo Tokyo, and populated by the aliens from the Mos Eisley cantina. It’s an urban crush of markets, plazas, and concrete valleys buzzing…

Free | PC | kabutokai.itch.io Downhill Jam comes remarkably close to the legendary Jet Set Radio, offering a downhill course in a similarly funky city. There are little alternate routes, collectible cash, and at the end a score so you can see how badly you did. In Downhill Jam you’re a cat on a hoverboard. You can customise the cat, giving it a hat and different boards to ride. But, despite the hovering, it feels familiarly like a skateboard, grinding rails in the same way and with controls that have become the standard over the years. That’s Downhill’s greatest strength: you can pick it up and (probably) know how to play it, grinning as you attempt its course a couple of times. The university students behind it have used their…

$39.95 | PC, XB1, XBS/X, PS4/5, Stadia | robotentertainment.com/omd3 This isn’t a thoughtful fantasy game: it makes little effort to contextualise its maligned title characters, to ponder where they come from or why they do what they do. Yet it is a thinking person’s game – a strategic siege simulator that rewards careful arrangement, inspired solutions, and a willingness to toss away past assumptions and approach a problem from a new angle. It’s a game that makes you feel smart, even as you swing your mouse desperately to slug an imp in the eye with a bolt of magic. Imagine you’re an interior designer, but in a universe where one of the tenets of feng shui is murder. Using a budget, you begin each level by buying, rotating, and placing…

RELEASE 2010 DEVELOPER 2K Marin PUBLISHER 2K Games LINK www.bioshockgame.com When BioShock 2 was released back in 2010, it had only been three years since we last got our feet wet in briny depths of Rapture. I remember feeling like the undersea dystopia was still relatively fresh in my mind, and had little desire to return. However, this sequel that nobody really wanted turned out to be confident, intelligent, and imaginative, matching the quality of the original, and in some ways bettering it. It’s the story of a Big Daddy, Subject Delta, searching the decaying, leaky corridors of Rapture for his Little Sister, and butting heads with Sofia Lamb, the psychiatrist turned cult leader who betrayed him. Rapture was in a bad way in BioShock, but a decade later it’s…

ASCOMP F-RENAME Quickly and easily rename files. DSC813913091. JPG, 20110920.AVI, DL_MUSICFILE. MP3 – every computer user knows them: meaningless file names, generated by the digital camera, smartphone or download manager. F-Rename brings light into the data dark and renames any number of files according to freely selectable patterns. It’s easy to apply different pre-made renaming patterns or individual patterns. Number or date entire file collections and name your MP3 files with just a few mouse clicks based on ID3 tags. The individual renaming function offers the highest possible flexibility. Not only does it allow you to use many tags, but it also helps to convert, shorten, and partially or completely replace existing file names. The preview and log features ensure that you never lose track of your valuable data. Download…

Intel Alchemist, aka DG2, GPUs are set to become the first gaming graphics cards spun out of the Intel Xe-HPG yarn, something that is promised to be the basis for many more competitive GPUs from the chipmaking Goliath. Alchemist also happens to be the first offering from Intel’s high-performance graphics brand, Arc, which covers hardware, software and services. It’s all set to kick-off at the start of next year, when we’ll see Intel put its best foot forward in hopes to heave open the hydraulic grip of Nvidia and AMD over gaming GPUs. Xe-HPG is born out of both Intel’s Xe-LP and Xe-HPC architectures, but with some specialised twists. As Intel has since explained at its Architecture Day 2021, Xe-HPG is built for gaming first. The new Xe-core within Alchemist…

If Dell’s long standing Alienware brand is a bit outside your budget then its home brand range of gaming laptops are an alternative that’ll give you more frames per dollar. We’ve seen a number of decent entry-level gaming laptops emerge at just over the $1,000 mark in the past few years and you can still get the G15s with a 10th Gen Intel i5 and a GTX 1650 for around $1,100 for anyone on a particularly tight budget. If you want the latest 11th Gen processors however, the new range of G15s start at the more mid-entry pricing of $1,699 ($1,444 on sale). For this you’ll get a 15.6-inch full HD display, a Core i5-11400H CPU, 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 3050 GPU system with 512GB of PCIe…

$1,599 | benq.com/en-au While pro gamers are going to use flat, small 16-by-9 screens because they’re the fastest, most colour accurate and consistent screens around, anyone that actually wants to enjoy games, ultrawide curved displays are where it’s at. Benq’s Mobiuz EX3415R is a 34-inch 21-by-9 ultrawide gaming display that is big enough to make you forget any ambitions you had for multi-screen setups. With a curvature of 1900R this screen is flat enough to keep everything nicely proportioned while still feeling like it wraps into your peripherals to give you a giant and consistent viewing experience. The EX3415R sits at the higher end of Ultrawide monitor resolutions with a 3,440 by 1,440 pixel screen that offers a great balance between clarity and GPU processor demand. “There’s no doubt you’ll…

“The promise of Zen 3 cores and best-in-class integrated graphics has been eagerly anticipated. Non-gamers appreciate having display capabilities without having to cough up needless expense for a discrete GPU, while casual gamers will find they can easily play older or less demanding titles, perhaps while waiting for discrete GPU prices to normalise.” $549 | www.amd.com AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs have been in high demand ever since they launched, but apart from the 5600X, the more affordable end of the market has been neglected. That’s beginning to change with the welcome return of the APU, which finally combine graphics capabilities with the Zen 3 architecture. The new Cezanne family of APUs is led by the Ryzen 7 5700G we have for review. It is joined by the hex-core Ryzen 5…

ACRONIS TRUEIMAGE 2021 $69.99/year for one device | http://acronis.com MACRIUM REFLECT HOME 8 US$69.95 for 1 PC | http://macrium.com Everyone needs a reliable backup tool, and as we outline in this issue’s main feature, that should include a full drive image of your entire system, giving you the ability to restore your PC to working order with minimal disruption in the event of disaster. This issue, we’re pitting two drive-imaging tools against each other: Macrium Reflect 8 Home Edition is the paid-for version of our favorite free drive-imaging tool, while Acronis TrueImage 2021 is a long-established and trusted heavyweight. But do you even need to pay for a drive-imaging tool? Macrium Reflect Free has protected our PCs for years, but there are some niggles that both the Home edition and…

When the APC Illustrated Bumper Book of World History is written, the years 2020 and 2021 will get their own chapter. Not because of politics but because of the global pandemic and shortage of microchips. Folding@home will probably need a lot of coverage, too – a citizen science project contributing to biochemical research projects that is free to add to and feels extremely cool while you do it (except for the heat it pumps out of your PC case). There’s not much we can do about the chip shortage, but the pandemic and Folding@home collided beautifully. It led to Folding@home becoming the fastest supercomputer on the planet, hitting one exaflop (a 1 followed by 18 zeros) on March 25, 2020, then peaking at 2.4 exaflops the next month. That’s as…

Have you ever suffered the crippling sensation of data loss? Found yourself having to reinstall Windows from scratch and realising just how many apps and settings have been lost? The importance of backups cannot be overstated, but does your current backup plan cover all the bases? Is it comprehensive, frequently updated, and spread across multiple locations? In this feature, we reveal the best free tools for the job, from taking a fail-safe backup of entire hard drives to protecting multiple versions of your data files, so you can undo unwanted changes in addition to protecting the files themselves. We also recommend what to look for in backup devices, and how to safely store your files in the cloud without potentially exposing them to third parties. Crucially, we step you through…

As things stand, you’ve protected your entire PC and your key files and folders. You’ve created multiple backups of each. But if you’d like to go further, the following apps and services are all worth considering. First, want to back up your email? MailStore Home (www.mailstore.com/en/products/ mailstorehome/) enables you to not just back up the email you download to your PC through Thunderbird or Outlook, but also works with any online POP3/IMAP account, as well as popular Internet mailboxes such as Gmail and Yahoo! You can easily download all or a portion of your mailboxes, and are also able to browse and search your archive offline, enabling you to free up space elsewhere. We recommend installing it as a portable version, allowing you to keep everything in a single folder…

MWAVE OFFICE PRO I7 WORKSTATION $1,299 – tinyurl.com/APC498MWV If you demand a bit more performance from your office computers and need an upgrade, this is an enthusiast-level system that won’t break the bank. Sporting an 8-core processor, it’ll have more grunt than most other office computers, and with the included 2.5Gb LAN port and W-Fi 6 (AX) support it’ll let you quickly transfer those large files you need to process. The RAM is interesting; rated higher than what the 10700 officially supports, it’ll facilitate 11th Gen drop-in processor upgrades down the track. The NR200 case being a DIY friendly chassis offers easy access to the internals and is very roomy for its size. If you foresee a need for upgrades down the track, this is a good system to consider.…

In an ideal world, we would rather be running an 11th-gen CPU in our new build, with a later Z590i motherboard. This would have certainly made more sense for our SSD. Regardless, our rig is still a more-than-capable fighting machine. Being a Mini-ITX build, it certainly was more difficult and awkward than a typical ATX case. Fitting everything to the motherboard was easy enough, but when it came to fitting parts inside the chassis, some niggling issues arose. The obvious lack of space meant that we had to take things more slowly. Every component we added decreased the available workspace, resulting in even more stress. This is where our long-necked magnetic screwdriver came in. Screwing down the motherboard was not as daunting thanks to this tool. The cooler created most…

IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to set up Twilio Authy to generate and supply 2FA codes YOU’LL NEED iPhone running iOS 11 or later, Authy (Free) Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a form of additional verification to protect your online accounts in case your password is compromised. Verification can take several forms: 2FA is the most popular, but others include receiving a confirmatory email or SMS message to your phone, or the need to complete logon using a secondary device. 2FA links your phone to your account via a special authenticator app that generates rotating numerical codes (six-eight digits) that change every 30 seconds. After entering your password, you’ll be prompted to check your app for the code, which you input to complete the logon process. There…

By default, when you come to share your entire screen, Deskreen will enable you to mirror it – handy, for example, if you want to keep an eye on several running tasks without being tied to your desk. If your PC’s graphics has multiple ports, you can go further by plugging a Virtual Display Adaptor into a spare HDMI or DisplayPort socket. These ‘dummy’ plugs cost as little as $10 on eBay – make sure you purchase the correct type for your ports. Once connected, your PC is tricked into thinking a second monitor has been plugged in, and Deskreen will give you the option of viewing this dummy display for real through your connected device. Adding a secondary display like this means you can extend your desktop, enabling you…

$35.95 | PC, XB1, XBS/X, PS4, PS5, Switch | variablestate.com Last Stop is a game about extraordinary things happening to ordinary people. Set on the streets of London, it follows four very different characters whose unremarkable lives are suddenly touched by the supernatural. It’s an offbeat mix of the mundane and the fantastic, where one minute you’re making a cup of tea, and the next you’re tumbling through a portal into another dimension. Last Stop is a linear narrative game. You tell the characters what to say in conversations, occasionally move them through heavily choreographed scenes, and not much else. In this sense, as a game, it’s very limited in scope. It has the feel of an anthology, telling three loosely linked stories that eventually intersect in the final chapter.…

$43.95 | PC, XB1, XBS/X, PS5, Switch | chernobylgame.com Chernobylite is a curious mash-up of ideas orbiting around a pretty stiff first-person shooter framework. But it feels more inviting thanks to its evocative setting and cast of grizzled scavengers. Despite some shortcomings, it succeeds as a game about choice, where you’re constantly faced with quandaries that may meaningfully affect the hero Igor’s journey as he chases spectral visions of his wife around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Killing a sketchy character early on might lead to an awkward impasse with his wife later, split-second decisions about whether or not to save stalkers from patrolling army guards will dictate how many allies and enemies you have in the Zone, and at every key point you’ll have companions radioing in to persuade you…

Free | PC | bit.ly/3rWKsji They don’t make platformers like they used to – and that’s mostly for the best. I have a hard time going back to games on the Mega Drive; there’s not a lot of humour, or playfulness, now that everything’s an emotive Metroidvania. Janosik is a Metroidvania. You’ll unlock abilities including a double-jump, and double-back on yourself. But it’s one with the spirit and energy of an Amiga game. There’s a boisterous chiptune soundtrack and vivid pixel art, but above all there’s the speed of it – Janosik knows you lead a busy life, so it hurls you around the place at a blistering clip. Despite being set in a large, connected world, not an inch of map is wasted here. Janosik is an ant farm…

“Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage.” APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms.…

Nothing is real and anything is possible – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s iconic kitchen, where he presented three pandemic-era keynote addresses in 2020 and 2021 – was almost entirely fake, including Huang himself (though his voice was real), during the company’s GTC 2021 keynote earlier this year and nobody even noticed. The virtual presentation was cooked up using something called Nvidia Omniverse, a multi-disciplinary collaboration tool for creating 3D virtual workspaces. For an annual keynote address known for impressive technical displays, this one certainly delivered. Most viewers had no idea they hadn’t seen the real Huang speaking from his real kitchen until a new documentary by Nvidia was released that detailed the efforts that went into making that presentation. A video of Nvidia’s DGX Station A100 workstation was also entirely…

Dell has split its AMD and Intel Alienware M15 offerings into two camps this year: the R5 and R6. We took a look at the Ryzen based R5 last month in APC 497, and while it was a nice machine it wasn’t priced particularly competitively, and only offered a 165Hz screen when most of the competition features 240 or 300Hz screens for the same cost. Clearly Alienware was trying to save the fastest screens for its M15 R6 offering to make it seem like a particularly premium offering. The M15 R6 range starts with an Intel Core i5-11400H CPU, 16GB RAM and Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU configuration with a 15.6-inch 165Hz FullHD display. Dell is selling this entry level model for $2,799, which is about $800 more expensive than some…

Dynabook, the Japanese laptop brand that was spun out of Toshiba in 2018, is continuing to expand its Australian range of devices with the new student focused E10-S. This new budget laptop is compact, durable and affordable… basically everything you’d be looking for if you needed a device for young kids to learn on. The E10-S is runs a low-powered dual-core Intel Celeron N4020 CPU that operates in a frequency range of 1.1-2.8GHz. Paired with 4GB of RAM and integrated Intel UHD Graphics 600 you really shouldn’ expect too much from this machine. Web browsing, document editing and very light browser-based games are about all this device can handle, but it’s enough to achieve all you’d need to in most young learning environments. The 11.5-inch screen is likely going to…

$679 | www.msi.com MSI is well known for its PC components, laptops, and systems. Now it’s adding another product category to its portfolio with the release of its Spatium SSD series. In fact, other than CPUs and memory, MSI now offer a complete catalogue of PC components. Here we have the flagship M480 SSD in for review. It’s joined by its more affordable sibling, the M470, which we’re also reviewing this issue. Can MSI challenge the established leaders in the SSD marketplace? “When it comes to performance, the Spatium M480 easily matches its rated sequential read and write speeds, in fact returning the fastest sequential write speeds we’ve seen from any drive to date.” Like almost all retail M.2 drives, the Spatium 480 is 2280 (80mm length) M.2 drive. It…

Are you considering an upgrade to an Intel 11th Gen system and wondering what kind of memory to go for? Choosing the best 11th Gen isn’t as cut and dried as it was with 10th Gen. We’ve got four kits in for review, all of which are very good in their own way. Though all of the kits can be used with any AMD or Intel DDR4 system, we’re focusing on 11th Gen for this roundup. The reason is the introduction of a new memory controller divider, or Gear 1 and Gear 2, which heavily influences how memory behaves on a Rocket Lake system. Unlike previous generations, Rocket Lake introduces an option to set the memory controller at half the speed of the memory clock, or 1:2. Intel refers to…

$529 | www.teamgroupinc.com If the Crucial kit sits in the performance sweet spot, then the Team Xtreem ARGB kit also sits there, but with an even sweeter cherry on top. At DDR4-3600 and 14-15-15-35 timings, this is where you should be looking for the optimal blend of Gear 1 low latency performance, 32GB capacity, and reasonable price; though its quite a jump from mainstream CL16 to CL18 3600 kits. The subtle white lighting looks amazing, though it might not match every build. It’s built with the Samsung B-Die IC, which remain the best DDR4 chips. It’s also a dual rank kit, which will give it a couple of extra percent of performance here and there. We tried a quick and dirty OC, but as expected it couldn’t match the much…

macOS 10.15 or later | $13.99 (IAPs) | gingerlabs.com Notability is one of our favourite note-taking apps for iOS and iPadOS. The Mac app interface is organised into four sections, including the main editing window. The Library is a Finder-style sidebar that shows note categories; to its right are the thumbnails of the notes in that category. There’s a main edit panel, and a note navigator with thumbnails of the current note at the right. If you hide all the other panels, the editing panel automatically resizes and rescales. We found that quite annoying – hiding the panels made the text jump from 11pt to 20pt, and switching into full-screen mode took it to 48pt. One of the things we like best about Notability on iOS is its support for…

Is there anybody involved in chip design with a better résumé than Jim Keller? He’s the brains behind not only AMD’s first CPU architecture to really sock it to Intel (that’ll be Hammer back in the 2000s), but also the driving force that led to Zen and AMD’s renaissance in the late 2010s. He sired Tesla’s Autopilot chip, set Apple on the path to building arguably the most efficient client CPUs available today, and more recently had a stint at Intel. Now Keller is heading a start-up, Tenstorrent, specialising in custom chips for accelerating AI workloads. That fact alone is enough to lend serious credibility to the field of AI and machine learning. According to Keller, there are now three kinds of computers. First there were CPUs. Then came GPUs.…

You can never have too many backup devices. A rule of thumb is to back up to a minimum of two physically separate drives or locations, and if you have cloud storage, store at least your most critical files online, too (ensuring they’re as secure as they can be). The cheapest backup option is a secondary hard drive – whether internal or connected via USB, it’s quick and convenient, but vulnerable to the same fire, damage, or theft as your main PC. With prices slowly tumbling, select the largest drive you can afford (4TB costs around $130) to meet your backup needs both now and going forward. Ideally, your second backup drive should be in a different room – if not off-site – to provide additional protection against physical threats.…

How do you restore data from Duplicati backups? If you’ve not had to reinstall Windows from scratch, simply open Duplicati in your browser, expand the relevant backup job, and click “Restore files” under “Operations.” If you’ve had to reinstall Duplicati from scratch on a new computer or install, and you backed up your configuration files, choose “Restore from configuration,” click “Next” to select your configuration file, and enter your password. On clicking “Next,” the backup job should be restored, and you can start the restoration process from there. If you didn’t back up the configuration file, choose “Restore > Direct restore from backup files” and click “Next.” This is a similar process to setting up your backup: Choose your provider, enter the destination path, and link to the account. You…

Small form factors are one of our favorite things in the mysterious depths of the tech industry. Year after year, hardware is condensing and we’re getting more punch from smaller devices. Yes, we all dream of having a monster machine as part of our setup, capable of rinsing everything we throw in its direction and giving NASA a run for its money. However, there is something intriguing about Mini-ITX builds that we just can’t escape from. Having a smaller rig can give you a cleaner setup and more room (obviously), and they look pretty neat, too, in our professional opinion. It seems as though Mini-ITX systems are nothing but positive news, but that isn’t necessarily the case. GPUs such as the impossible-to-grab 3090 cards, for instance, are generally too big…

Malware begone! I have a very frustrating problem with some adware/malware. My pastor has an older PC running Win 10. It has the free versions of AVG and Malwarebytes installed, along with Windows Defender. A year or so ago, she started getting ads for Staples.com popping up, taking over the Chrome browser. We noticed that while she was working on a document, the Run command prompt would pop up in the lower-left of the screen and she would be taken to Staples.com. I checked the Run command history and found several variations of Staples.com in the list. Some were misspelled. I ran deep scans with AVG and Malwarebytes but found nothing. I erased the Run history, cleared the cache, ran CCleaner, and hoped for the best. Three days later, it…

If you decide to go with a clean installation of Windows 11, you’ll need to reinstall all your apps, and it can be useful to see exactly what you’ve got installed on your PC, especially if it’s been a while since you set it up. To do this, run Command Prompt as an administrator, and type wmic and Enter. Once the WMIC prompt opens, type /output:C:\list.txt product get name, version then hit Enter. You can replace C:\list.txt with another file name or output directory. Close the WMIC window once it’s finished. A list of your installed software should be available as a text file in the location you provided for the output file. You also get a version number, so you can check whether updates are available when it comes…

If you’re forced to remove Authy from your primary phone, but later recover the phone successfully, download the app and go through the account verification process as outlined in the main text. After doing so, all your accounts will appear back on your phone, but you’ll see they’re protected with a lock symbol – tap one and enter your Authy backup password to unlock your account and regain access. If this doesn’t work, visit authy.com/phones/reset to begin the account recovery process, which can take up to 24 hours to complete.…

While it’s a flexible, affordable and much-loved piece of computing hardware, the Raspberry Pi isn’t without its problems. One particular bugbear is the device’s reliance on flash storage – potentially unreliable SD and microSD cards that are prone to data corruption following an unscheduled shutdown or restart. One way to avoid this is to ensure that the Pi is shut down carefully. But it also pays to have a backup of your data, just in case the worst happens. Raspberry Pi has several options for backup, from cloning the microSD card to remotely backing up over SSH. Clone wars The ability to switch Raspberry Pi projects simply by swapping microSD cards means that if a card is found to be corrupt, you can easily flash an image of its contents…

AMIGA 500 MINI PACKS 25 GAMES INTO A TINY FRAME A PC classic gets the mini-console treatment. Retro Games Ltd has announced the Amiga 500 Mini, a small Amiga emulation box that works similarly to the recent Commodore 64 Mini. No measurements have been released as yet, but it’ll likely be about a quarter of the size of the original – save the bundled mouse and gamepad, which are both the same size as the originals. As always with these retro systems, this is an aesthetically pleasing keepsake rather than an optimal way to emulate Amiga games. It comes with 25 in-built titles, including Another World, Battle Chess and Worms: The Director’s Cut, but you can also side-load any Amiga games you already own via a USB stick. There’s also…

Free | PC | bit.ly/VedelemGame Vedelem is a strategy game where you’re trying to defend a fragile central keep, primarily by building walls and training squads of eager little soldiers. When the enemy arrives – they appear in waves over the course of each game session – you drag-select and inflict your troops upon them, in the tried and tested RTS manner. It’s pretty satisfying, zooming in to watch them wail on each other, despite the budget, slightly wonky animations. In the late game, the number of soldiers can get ridiculous. Walls will help slow down the invaders, while swordsmen, archers and spearmen will obviously mop them up – but everything comes back to those resources sitting on the procedurally generated map. While you’re fighting, you should also be building…

THE UK HAS A CRAPPY IDEA TO FIX REMOTE INTERNET CONNECTIVITY Fibre optic cable to run through shared sewage and water infrastructure in Britain. While there’s undoubtedly plenty of crap on the internet, you wouldn’t normally consider that your internet line needed to be run through sewage pipes, but that’s just what a new project in the UK is looking at doing. Britain is calling for commercial pitches from companies to use existing water infrastructure to deliver fibre optic cables to regions that have been deemed too remote to justify the cost of digging standalone telecom infrastructure. Broadband cables have been run in shared infrastructure across Spain already and may offer novel opportunities to detect water leaks. ETHERROCK CLIP-ART NFT SELLS FOR $422,000 Basic royalty-free rock graphic sells for 95.2…