Table of contents for February 2022 in APC

What’s been your stand-out tech of the year? Here at APC we’re thinking about that right now, and a few particularly nice things linger in our memory. As always, as we get into 2022 in earnest, the team will be putting together our annual Australian PC Awards, but until we actually formalise that and homogenise the many differing opinions of the editorial team, it’s fun to look at what shone in 2021 less formally. I was really impressed with the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 this year. By gosh is it nice. Microsoft don’t get enough credit for the design, manufacturing, and materials used in all of its hardware. I feel they’re taken for granted in some ways. The bar was set long ago with the first Microsoft Intellimouse and the…

AMD’s Zen architecture propelled it to the top of the desktop PC market, but Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs now offer a compelling alternative. Not to be outgunned, at CES 2022 AMD teased renders of the coming 5nm Zen 4 chips that will come with Ryzen 7000 branding and a radical new design that will drop into the new AM5 LGA socket. In addition, AMD demoed a Ryzen 7000 ‘Raphael’ chip running Halo Infinite with all cores surpassing 5.0GHz during the benchmark. AMD says the Ryzen 7000 processors will arrive in the second half of the year. In the interim, AMD will fire back at Alder Lake this autumn with its Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor. This new chip features AMD’s new 3D V-Cache tech that packs a whopping 96MB of L3…

Intel finally unveiled its full Alder Lake Mobile lineup at CES 2022, including the new 45W H-series that tops out at 14 cores and a 5.0 GHz boost, the 28W P-series, and the 18W U-series models. Intel claims that its 14-core 20-thread Core i9-12900HK is now the world’s fastest mobile processor, even compared to Apple’s M1 Max and M1 Pro. Intel also claims the H-series is the world’s best mobile gaming platform with up to a 28 percent gain in gaming and 40 percent gain in creativity apps over the previous-gen models. The chips also support leading-edge DDR5 and LPDDR5 interfaces along with PCIe 4.0 and a whole host of other connectivity options. Intel’s 12th-Gen is in full production, and the first designs hit the market in February. Intel’s 12th-Gen…

It’s Apple again, but the new MacBook Pro with its M1-derived uberchip. It’s a monster performer, but will it come apart? Major tech specs • M1 Pro (APL1103) SoC with 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU • 16GB LPDDR5 RAM (200GB/s bandwidth) and 256GB SSD • 16.2-inch (3456 x 2234 pixels) Liquid Retina XDR LCD display, 1,600 nits peak, mini-LED backlight • 100 Wh battery, 140W USB-C PSU with MagSafe 3 • Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW • 3x Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, SDXC card, high-impedance headphone jack • Force Touch trackpad, 1080p FaceTime HD camera Key findings Just look at those ports. With so many places to plug things in and so many dongles scorned, Jony Ive must be rolling in his …. Ferrari. MagSafe also makes a triumphant return…

Tesla Cyberquad A mini quadbike for the children of the future. US$1,900 | tesla.com In a surprise December announcement, Tesla released a tiny quadbike called the Cyberquad, which sold out extremely quickly. This child-sized electric ATV is not exactly the one that Musk promised would accompany the Cybertruck when it launched back in 2019, but it’s still pretty cool for kids with absolutely minted parents. Built to accommodate humans up to 68kg, this quad can fang it at speeds up to 16km/h. It’s not quite Ludicrous Mode, but it’s not bad if you’re eight years old. HERVET MANUFACTURER ARCADIA The choice between another NFT and a Pacman emulator just got real. €23,800 | ambassade-excellence.com Do you like arcade games? I mean really like them… like drop $38,000 on a machine…

$1,499 | aoc.com Can you have too much of a good thing? Such is the question posed by the epic, immense, AOC Agon AG493UCX2, a 49-inch beast of a gaming monitor. It’s actually a moderate update of AOC’s existing AG493UCX, though that makes it no less immediately impactful. As before, the star of the show is the massive 49-inch super-ultra-whatever-wide VA panel with an aspect ratio of 32:9 and 5,120 by 1,440 pixels. This time around, AOC has upped the refresh ante from 120Hz to 165Hz. As before there’s basic HDR support in the form of DisplayHDR 400 certification, but the claimed peak brightness has actually dropped from 550 nits to 400 nits. We suspect that reflects a change in the way brightness is measured rather than any actual substantial…

$299 | aoc.com Give it up for that rarest of things in these unusual times, a gaming peripheral that won’t break the bank. We present the AOC 24G2, a 24-inch gaming monitor available for around $300, though day-to-day pricing is pretty volatile right now. For that, you get all your basic gaming needs covered. And then some. High refresh, IPS image quality, adaptive sync, even slim-bezel styling, it’s all here. At this price point, of course, something has to give. Along with the modest 24-inch proportions, you’ll also have to make do with a mere 1080p resolution. But then that’s a good fit with both the performance of most budget-orientated gaming PCs and the average gamer’s actual budget too. At the heart of the AOC 24G2 is a 24-inch 144Hz…

$599 | www.tp-link.com/au It’s been a while since we’ve seen a turbo-charged Wi-Fi 6 router on these pages. The initial splurge of models that landed with the then-new Wi-Fi 6 technology has been replaced with a gentle trickle of budget models in recent months. So, we were interested to see how TP-Link’s latest, tri-band gaming router would impact the market. The Archer GX90 comes from the garish-alien-mothership school of router design. It’s big, brash and does not sit quietly in a nice living room. We’ve also seen it before… this is also the body of TP-Link’s Archer AX11000 from last year, which impressed us with performance but disappointed us for value. We’ve subsequently seen many much more expensive, mega-mesh routers (two nodes connected by a dedicated backhaul channel for great…

$82 | steelseries.com SteelSeries’ Apex 3 TKL is a smaller take on the brand’s most budget-friendly keyboard. As it’s a TKL format, it takes the 10-key numeric pad away from the standard Apex 3 board, making it a favourite amongst esports competitors. With less room taken up on your desk, there’s more room to swipe that mouse around. This board also has a pretty nifty feature that may separate it from its main competitors. Although this is a TKL model, the Apex 3 TKL still offers you a taller format than normal. There is plenty of room on this board and it doesn’t feel as cramped as others. From the few first clicks after setting this keyboard up, it feels a little more premium than its price tag may suggest,…

$65 | www.logitechg.com Looking at the Logitech G305 Lightspeed Wireless, you wouldn’t expect it to be so cheap. Not that it’s the most impressive mouse you’ll ever see – on the contrary, it takes on a more minimalist aesthetic that’s a rarity in gaming mice. However, it also looks stylish, robust, and capable. More importantly, it’s wireless, and that feature always puts a premium, literally, on peripherals even now. There’s no denying the Logitech G305 Lightspeed Wireless is adorable. It comes in three different colourways – blue with lilac accents, lilac with purple accents, and mint with lilac – if you’re tired of the same old solid black colour and want to spruce up your gaming setup. Of course, there’s also a white and a black one for those looking…

Coinciding with the launch of Intel’s 12th Gen platform comes the brand new DDR5 memory standard. The new memory starts at 4800MHz and is available at speeds of up to 6400MHz, with much higher speeds to come in the future. What kind of kit will suit your system? Should you be hunting for a fast DDR5 kit at all right now? We’ve got a selection of five DDR5 kits on hand, covering everywhere from the entry level up to the bleeding edge. Don’t forget that 12th Gen CPUs support DDR4 too! DDR5 pros and cons The demands of modern multi-core CPUs was a key driver behind the development of DDR5. Applications that can take advantage of the higher bandwidth vary, but tend to include tasks such as video encoding and…

$749 | www.gskill.com Now we’re moving beyond the basic kits and speeds and getting into enthusiast territory. G.Skill’s DDR5-6000 kit with 36-36-36-76 timings shows what the first generation of DDR5 is capable of. It’s the only kit in our test to feature Samsung ICs. The problem is, kits at 6,000MHz and higher are made of unobtanium and other than a few kits that were in stock at the time of the 12th Gen launch, they have been essentially absent over since. We’re told the situation will change in early 2022, so let’s try to put that aside for now. Looks are subjective but we feel the design of the G.Skill kit is the best of all the kits in the roundup. It’s sleek and its RGB implementation is just right…

Pandemic aside, 2021 has been one heck of a year. Our world of technology is still forever advancing, regardless of the silicon shortages. We’ve seen new graphics cards, processors, screens, peripherals, cases, cooling solutions, and ever crazier announcements and launches over the past 12 months. The tech landscape has really changed quite dramatically, companies have thrived, died, and survived as various economic impacts of the silicon shortage have finally hit home. And yet, the long advancing march of technology still trundles on ever forwards. So, 2022 is set up to be quite the year. Hopefully, its arrival will signal not only the end of the pandemic and its many impacts but also the end of the chip shortages too. With a host of new fabs and technologies opening up across…

They are generally at low altitudes between 200 and 1,000 kilometres up, though more data comes from geostationary satellites 35,000 kilometres above the Earth, and yet more from deep-space satellites, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory that sits 1.6 million kilometres out. A particular type of polar orbit, known as a sun-synchronous orbit, means the satellite passes points on the Earth’s surface at the same time every day – for example passing over New York at noon each day. By taking pictures and measurements as the satellite passes over the same spot at the same time day after day, patterns of weather can be studied, and the conditions before dangerous events, such as floods or forest fires, can be identified so that they can…

If your router is showing signs of its age, but you don’t want to upgrade, then visit the DD-WRT webpage https://dd-wrt.com/ support/router-database/ and see if your router model is listed as being compatible with the free DD-WRT alternative firmware. If not, consider an affordable upgrade, such as the Archer C7 that can be flashed with DD-WRT. DD-WRT adds useful functionality to consumer-grade routers, including additional security tools, such as a firewall, VLAN support, and a VPN server. It’s also frequently updated, so your router stays up to date. Not all features are available on each device, so after confirming compatibility try Googling your model number and ‘dd-wrt’ to see how others have fared. Although the main DD-WRT interface is straightforward to navigate, some features require a degree of technical know-how,…

Given the insane asking prices for DDR5 kits and the complete lack of supply at the moment, unless you can use the extra bandwidth for productivity tasks that earns you money as part of a job, DDR4 is quite obviously the memory of choice for Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs. New memory standards always take a while to really start showing benefits over the previous generation, and DDR5 is no exception. You would think a doubling of bandwidth for DDR5 (between 4,800MT/s and 7,200MT/s) over the outgoing DDR4 (1,600MT/s to 3,200MT/s) specification would mean that DDR5 is obviously faster and thus better. Unfortunately, to achieve such high bandwidth speeds latency has suffered and, as a result, DDR5 kits currently have CAS latency values of around 38 to 40 cycles. Using these…

As long as your creativity is infinite, you can add more to your design work and take it to the next level. Patterns and textures are a great route to advance your artwork. Sure, the less-is-more technique is also another strong approach, however, we are going all out for this tutorial. Adding a texture can make certain elements in your work pop, giving them stronger contrast and a 3D look. When used in the right places, it gives more depth and detail that should help to grab the audience’s attention. With flat artwork, a texture can give a grainy vintage feel, which is the look we are aiming for here. In this tutorial, we will take a look at how to change the original flat art plant designs we created…

On some websites that support two-factor authentication, you can use Passwords instead of a dedicated authenticator app. This means that you will enter the code on your Mac and not an iPhone. To set it up, you’ll need to visit the website and get an authentication key. You then navigate to the Edit screen for the account in System Preferences > Passwords, choose Enter Setup Key and paste in the key. When you need to log in to the website, go to the account in Passwords and you will see the time-limited verification key.…

Sharing files between two devices on the same network should be straightforward, right? However, anyone who’s wanted to quickly shunt a file to or from their mobile device, but struggled getting shared folders set up that all the machines on their network can see or access, might have something to say about that. You could try setting up a pair of synced folders using a tool like the wonderful Syncthing, or make use of cloud storage such as Google Drive or Dropbox, but these all come with their own pitfalls. Synced folders can result in data loss if used incorrectly, while cloud storage has question marks over its security. This is where a tool like Sharik (https://github.com/ marchellodev/sharik) comes in. It’s designed to make it easy to send files to…

This month we look at what was arguably one of Apple’s best and most underrated products: the Apple IIGS. Designed for superior graphics and sound (hence the “GS” moniker), the IIGS brought the old Apple II line into the next era of computing and was the first Apple computer to feature a colour desktop. Despite its impressive 16-bit capabilities, the IIGS would play second fiddle to the likes of the Commodore Amiga or Atari ST. This makes it a gold mine for retro computing enthusiasts, with cult games, applications, and a phenomenal sound chip waiting to be discovered. Development Steve Wozniak rejoined Apple and set his sights on making a substantial upgrade to the aging Apple II line, with a 16-bit CPU and backward compatibility with 8-bit Apple II software.…

$56.95 | PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X, Stadia | chorusthegame.com Having six degrees of freedom is not as freeing as it might appear. Take spaceship combat, the exciting process of spewing lasers at enemies. For every successfully landed shot, there’s a whole lot of endlessly swerving to keep those fighter ships in view. It can be exhausting; sometimes I dread the arrival of a fleet, rather than being excited for the dogfight. Enter Chorus, a game that makes spaceship combat fast and thrilling. Rather than constantly tilting your ship to follow the enemy, here you have a touch of physics-defying magic that lets you ‘drift’ like you’re in a sports car. Pretty soon you’re using your Jedi-esque powers to disrupt shields and batter the enemy with Void-powered attacks. With its physics and…

Free | PC, Mac, Linux lumbirbwut.itch.io This game is a platformer with an emotional hook. Before every stage, memories unfold about the protagonist’s grandmother, who so loves the flowers you have to bloom to complete each level. You make them bloom merely by touching them – but if you touch them again they’ll wilt, so you can’t really backtrack as you run, leap and wall-jump around each one-screen stage. Crush even a single flower and you’ll restart, but bloom all the red flowers and you’ll beat the level, with a pat on the back from Gran if you can see to the yellow ones as well. There are a couple of ideas I haven’t seen in a Sokoban game before. Firstly the baskets, which you can carry around and stuff…

ASHAMPOO UNINSTALLER 9 The complete uninstaller for risk-free PC usage. Ashampoo UnInstaller 9 is your safety net to try and completely uninstall programs without any leftovers. You decide what goes and stays on your PC. The program carefully monitors each installation in depth to completely remove it should the need arise. Even unmonitored installations are reversible thanks to in-depth cleaning technology. With UnInstaller 9, unwanted programs, browser extensions and toolbars disappear from your system at the click of a button! And thanks to innovative snapshot technology, you can track any modifications to to your system instantly and intuitively. Download link: www.apcmag.com/exclusives AUDIALS RADIO 2022 SPECIAL EDITION 100,000 radios legally conjures up a lot of free MP3s. There are over 100,000 international, national and even regional internet radios from 120 music…

Nvidia has finally announced a “budget” RTX card with the GeForce RTX 3050. It also revealed details on the already leaked RTX 3090 Ti, and announced RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPUs. The RTX 3050 desktop card will use the same trimmed down GA107 GPU found in the mobile 3050/3050 Ti. That’s not great news, since GA107 only has a 128-bit memory interface and up to 2560 CUDA cores. The desktop 3050 will use the maximum 20 SMs (streaming multiprocessors), giving it 2,560 GPU cores, and of course the RTX 3050 also features RT cores for ray tracing and tensor cores for DLSS and other applications. Next up, the RTX 3090 Ti will basically give a minor bump in GPU core counts. It will utilise a fully-enabled…

It appears that Apple has kept a closely-guarded secret regarding its new M1 Max silicon. New pics of the underside of the chip reveal that it may actually have an interconnect bus that enables Multi-Chip-Module (MCM) scaling, allowing the company to stack together multiple dies in a chiplet-based design. That could result in chips with as many as 40 CPU cores and 128 GPU cores. Apple has yet to confirm provisions for chipletbased designs, but the M1 Max could theoretically scale into an “M1 Max Duo” or even an “M1 Max Quadra” configuration, aligning with persistent reports of various chiplet-based M1 designs in the future. Apple has managed to impress the world not once but twice already with the performance of its Arm-based M1 CPUs. The company’s latest M1 Max…

As its stands now, the second half of the year is looking like an absolute barnstormer. If you want to build a high-end PC, that will be the time, and hopefully we’ll be able to buy the stuff without having to sell a kidney! 2021 got off to a good enough start. The Covid vaccines were being rolled out and there was a sense of optimism that was missing for a lot of 2020. Then Delta arrived and reset everything. Not just in our little part of the world, but in the world of tech too. Semiconductor shortages, graphics card supply and demand and not one, but two new architectures from Intel grabbed the attention. There’s also Nvidia’s attempted buyout of ARM. Things were a bit quieter on the AMD…

VALVE INDEX $1,400.00, www.store. steampowered.com A VR headset from the creators of Steam should be a recipe for success. It’s fairly pricey and doesn’t have the luxury of being untethered, however, its 120Hz display should help prevent motion sickness, one of VR’s biggest downsides. The individual finger-tracking controllers are revolutionary, making the Index a great high-end VR package. OCULUS QUEST 2 $479.00, www.oculus.com. This standalone headset offers more freedom than tethered rigs, though you can also pair it to your PC with an additional cable if you prefer. Like Vive, Oculus has been around since the start of VR’s emergence over the past decade. This headset features ergonomic halo controllers and a decent array of title releases, making the Oculus Quest 2 an excellent alternative to a fully-fledged PC setup.…

$2,299 | asus.com/au It’s not every day that you come across a laptop that has just about every feature a creative professional could want, but the Asus VivoBook Pro 15 OLED sports an impressive colour-accurate screen, a powerful CPU and a step-up discrete graphics card. It also manages to do all this in a reasonably compact package and at a price that isn’t going to turn too many people away. In addition to the added vibrancy of the OLED panel the 15.6-inch display on the Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED also offers above average peak brightness at 600nits, giving the screen an impressive Vesa HDR True Black 600 colour certification. Verified by Pantone, the display also meets 100 percent of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, which means it’s capable of professional…

$699 | dell.com At the more extreme end of the monitor market, things don’t just get a bit pricey. You can also find yourself with a display that’s fine-tuned for some tasks, but not so good for others. Enter the new Dell S3222DGM. At just over $300, it’s an affordable 32-inch monitor and a decent proposition for everything from gaming to web browsing. It’s a true all-rounder. The S3222DGM is a 1440p model, which means 2,560 x 1,440 pixels. That’s adequate in terms of desktop real estate, but also a good compromise between detail and performance. 4K is sweet, but it seriously hammers your GPU. Given the cost of graphics upgrades right now, that’s a problem. The issue with that 32-inch, 1440p combo involves general productivity duties. The consequent 93dpi…

$1,799 | https://www.benq.com/ We’ve seen some massive monitors this year but the EW3880R from BenQ, with its 21:9 aspect ratio, is the widest and certainly one of the most interesting. The 38-inch (37.5-inch viewable) screen has great presence (before you even turn it on) with its subtle-brown speaker grille and stand. It looks like something that would almost fit into a living room. It sports a 3,840 x 1,600 resolution which is capable of displaying a crisp and detailed Windows Desktop and allows for four (count’em!) full-sized A4 windows to be placed next to one another. This can be a great productivity boon for those working with multiple documents, browsers and, especially, spreadsheets. However, we found that turning our head to look from one end of the screen to another…

$719.95 | www.draytek.com.au It’s easy for wireless access points to all look the same. White and angular, or on occasion rounded, and only standing out when they stop working. But as the 1060C sets out to prove, it’s what’s inside that counts. In this case, the DrayTek access point features relatively high end hardware, designed for businesses with a focus on multiuser wireless network performance. The headline feature here is the Wi-Fi 6 AX3600 spec, giving a massive combined 3.6Gbps data rate across all bands. That’s 1200Mbps on 2.4GHz, and 2400Mbps on 5GHz – with the latter supporting 4x4 MU-MIMO for efficient connection to many users at once. Importantly, it also has an extra third radio, which is dedicated to monitoring and analysing RF signals. This allows the 1060C to…

$329 | tinker-board.asus.com Designed to outmatch the Raspberry Pi 4, the Asus Tinkerboard 2S has a few features that look good on paper compared to the Pi, including a six-core CPU and 16GB of on-board storage. The Asus Tinker Board 2S has a big. LITTLE CPU configuration, with two 2GHz Arm Cortex A72 cores and four 1.5GHz Arm Cortex A53 cores. When we need the extra power, the A72s kick in, but for general tasks the A53s get the job done. That’s compared to four, equal 1.5GHz Cortex A72 cores on the Raspberry Pi 4. The default operating system for The Asus Tinker Board 2S is Tinker OS, a fork of Debian 10 “Buster”, which uses LXDE as the desktop environment. Tinker OS is a functional and responsive OS, but…

MAC STORE & OTHER MAC APPS | macOS 11.0 or later | $7.99/month (Apple Arcade | konami.com Going strong since 1986, Castlevania is a series beloved the world over. That’s why the latest instalment on Apple Arcade, Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls, is such a disappointment. It’s not a bad game, but it’s certainly not a great game. Grimoire of Souls sees Dracula return for the umpteenth time (apparently no one’s learned the old stake-through-the-heart trick) and he must be purged from the world by Genya Arikado and a roving band of characters from past games, including Alucard, Simon Belmont, Charlotte Aulin, and others. Our heroes delve into mystical Grimoires – ancient books that contain info on past Castlevania events – and cleanse them of evil before Dracula can be resurrected.…

Free | iOS/Android Deep and meaningful conversations, even though with close friends or family, can be tough to start. Wild Honesty aims to create and foster these meatier topics in a way that is fun and inclusive. You can tailor the intensity of the questions and topics that come up based on your comfort level and those you are playing with. The game is played on a single device that you pass around, which questions that ask and foster positive discussions. It can be difficult to come out of your comfort zone, especially after the last few years we’ve just experienced. Thankfully, there’s a fun little animal guessing game between rounds to lighten things up, before getting back into the deeper aspects. It’s certainly not an experience for everyone, but…

$599 | www.corsair.com The first of our kits is Corsair’s Dominator Platinum RGB 5,200MHz C38 kit. This speed, along with its 38-38-38-84 timings sits at about where we’d consider to be the DDR5’s first generation sweet spot, though future pricing will no doubt require a rethink of that statement. The kit looks great, especially the black aluminium heat spreaders which add a real touch of class. There’s a Tetris-like RGB look atop the heat spreaders. If you’ve got other Corsair components, then you’ll be right at home thanks to Corsair’s popular, if somewhat heavy iCue software. It’s also worth noting that these modules are very tall, so you’ll need to make sure your cooler won’t be impeded. The Corsair kit performs at a good level in our benchmark results. It’s…

$449 | www.kingston.com Kingston’s Fury Beast kit mightn’t set speed records, but at $449 it offers reasonable value, and at a time when some 32Gb kits can be close to twice that price, that’s worthy of praise. The Kingston kit comes with basic black heat spreaders. Though it hardly needs them thanks to a low 1.1V operating voltage. With its 38-38-38-70 timings and 32GB capacity, the Kingston kit sits at what we’d consider to be the entry point for a DDR5 kit. At its default speed, the Kingston kit showed itself to be measurably faster than the 2x8GB Crucial kit, at least in those benchmarks that are influenced by memory speeds. This proves that 2x8GB kits with fewer bank groups are not optimal. The Kingston kit didn’t lose all that…

Just how secure is your home network? These days, it’s a crucial part of our everyday lives, connecting all our home devices to each other and the wider internet.But it’s also a target for hackers and other nefarious folk. By default, the router or modem router you’re using will be set up with convenience rather than security in mind, which puts you at risk of being attacked. Your network is primarily vulnerable to attack from two vectors: first, by a physical incursion from someone within the range of your Wi-Fi network. You’d be surprised at its range – try wandering out front or back to see how easy it is for your network to reach into a neighbor’s yard or basement, or the sidewalk. If your network isn’t protected by…

Have you ever been on the road and needed to access your home network in some way, such as copying files to or from a shared folder, or sending something to your home printer for when you return? If you use a VPN server, you can add this functionality securely without leaving your network open to attack. VPN servers require existing hardware set up inside your home network. This might be on your SOHO router (VPN Plus is part of Synology’s SRM software), or you could add it to your server: PiVPN (https:// pivpn.io/) works with a spare Raspberry Pi, for example, or you’ll find support in higher-end NAS drives from the likes of QNAP and Synology. You can even create a VPN server on your Windows PC, although you’d…

PC CASE GEAR CITADEL 1650 $1,799 – tinyurl.com/APC503PCC All the components of this system are reasonably well-balanced against each other with budget and cost obviously being the main driver in each component choice. The CPU is well regarded and a good choice here, with its age keeping prices down while still offering solid performance. The B550 motherboard it’s mated to is a tad surprising, as a cheaper B450 version would’ve shaved another $50 off the price with out any negative side effects. The SSD is the weakest link in this setup, with just 2,200MB/s read speeds compared to the 3,500MB/s of better ones. For basic 1080p gaming this rig will do perfectly well without costing a fortune. CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600; Cooler: OEM; Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M DS3H; Graphics: Gigabyte…

Now that you have completed this first part of this tutorial, you can experiment with ways of taking the concept further. One possibility could be to take one of the plants from the artwork we have made and apply a grid repeat effect so that you end up with a patterned wallpaper look. First, we need to copy one whole plant by highlighting the necessary shapes – as an aside here, if you ever highlight too much of the board or too many individual shapes, simply hold the shift button and click on the parts that you don’t want to highlight, and this will deselect them. Once you have the desired items selected, make sure all the shapes that make up that item are grouped together, by pressing CTRL–G. Then,…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to improve your fitness in a balanced way with Gentler YOU’LL NEED Gentler, iOS 13 or later There are a lot of apps that claim to help visualise your fitness data, but few like Gentler. Instead of pushing you to ever greater feats of fitness and endurance, this app helps you find a balance between overwork and inactivity. One of the ways it does this is with its Activity Cloud, a green bar that serves as a ‘compass’ for your condition. If your activity level goes above the Activity Cloud, you should rest more. If it’s below, try to be more active. The app determines your position in the cloud based on your age, gender, resting heart rate, training history, and…

You’ll find additional sharing options are available when using Sharik from your mobile. For example, Android users can share installed apps between devices – these are transferred as .apk files. Apple users can share photos using the Gallery option (Android users can share their photos via the Files option). Although a version of Sharik is available from the Google Play Store, this is outdated. A better bet is to install the latest version – 3.0 at time of writing – from the open-source F-Droid (visit www.f-droid.org to get started if you haven’t already got it). Once you’re sporting the latest 3.0 release, you’ll be able to share content directly from apps using the system Share button – in Android, after tapping Share, select More under ‘Share to apps’ and you…

The IIGS isn’t as well archived as the Apple II or Macintosh, but many of the same websites host IIGS software, such as macintoshrepository.org. As usual, archive.org has a good selection, but our favorite site was ‘What is the Apple IIGS?’ at whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za. For hard drive images, archive.org has a hard drive image available in TOSEC’s IIGS archive, though we preferred the ‘What is the Apple IIGS?’ website, which has hard drive images pre-loaded with shareware and freeware software.…

$44.95 | PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X, Switch | ruinedking.com Ruined King may seem familiar if you follow fantasy RPGs. Not because it’s a League of Legends spin-off, but because it draws from the developer’s previous release, Battle Chasers: Nightwar. Ruined King, too, is an isometric RPG with a turn-based battle system and Joe Madureira art. Essentially, a few of the LoL champs – Miss Fortune, Illaoi, Braum, and a few others – have teamed up to save the city of Bilgewater from your standard Deadly Fantasy Mist: the same mist that has consumed the nearby Shadow Isles. Each happens to be in Bilgewater on unrelated business, before fate conspires to bring the gang together.There’s not much more to Ruined King’s story than that. It’s a straightforward – you might say clichéd…

$84.95 | PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X The premise is simple: you’re tasked with the construction and management of a series of dinosaur theme parks fashioned after those of the titular film franchise. The campaign picks up directly after the events of the latest movie, with humanity struggling to adapt to life among an abundance of (spoiler alert) recently escaped dinosaurs. While the entire story can be finished in under two hours, which leaves little room for any real plot development, fans will likely appreciate the abundance of voice work from Jeff Goldblum – who reprises his role as Dr Ian Malcolm. Although Sandbox and Challenge are both self explanatory, the Chaos Theory mode, which presents ‘what if’ scenarios based on each of the five films, is the star of the show.…

“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.…

Intel’s CES 2022 keynote found the company introducing the remaining 22 Alder Lake-S chips that will round out its lineup for desktop PCs. The company also announced that the more affordable H670, B660 and H610 chipsets would come to market soon, helping to address the high platform pricing associated with the pricier Z690 motherboards. Intel also shared details about its new Laminar lineup of stock coolers that come bundled with its non-K SKUs. These new coolers appear to add plenty of new cooling capabilities in tandem with some RGB bling, both of which are sorely needed to compete with AMD’s historically excellent Ryzen stock coolers. These 22 new 65W and 35W chips complement the three Alder Lake models (Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K, and Core i5-12600K) already on the market. As…

You could be forgiven for never having heard of Roblox. Yet, as of August 2020 it had 164 million monthly users, and according to Roblox Corp itself, more than half of all American’s kids under 16 play it. That’s a gargantuan phenomenon, then – bigger than Fortnite – only its long and slow gestation (it was launched in 2004) coupled with its young audience, means it doesn’t get a huge amount of media attention. It’s basically a user-generated content platform. Roblox offers a surprisingly powerful game making tool with a user interface that young kids can wrap their head around. You can either make games, or play games by other people, and it’s possible to make a fair bit of actual real world money from games created in Roblox, in…

When getting a new system or finishing a new PC build, one of the first tasks is usually to change the default web browser. Yes, Microsoft provides you with its Edge browser. But for most people, it simply doesn’t cut it. Beyond the simple task of downloading Google Chrome, that tends to be pretty much it for Edge. In the majority of cases, you will probably find yourself switching to the Google Chrome browser. While there are many alternatives out there, including Firefox, Opera, and Safari (for those using macOS), Chrome remains the most popular browser. Google Chrome is built on the same Chromium open-source browser used by many other browsers, including Microsoft Edge. This means some of the features that make Chrome so popular can also be seen on…

$2,499 | eizo-apac.com This is far from the first 38-inch nearly-4K ultrawide monitor on the market. But the Eizo FlexScan EV3895 is unusual in that it is aimed squarely at the professional productivity market, if not actually at content creation pros. In fact, there are a few good reasons why we haven’t seen a 38-inch, 21:9 curved productivity panel before. The curvature isn’t necessarily a benefit when it comes to getting stuff done as opposed to, say, gaming immersion. The large panel size also translates into a relatively low pixel density, which isn’t optimal for font rendering, general image sharpness, and detail. A ‘conventional’ 16:9-aspect 32-inch or 27-inch 4K monitor offers more pixels, better pixel density, and the potential for more desktop space depending on your scaling preferences. It’s also…

$2,250, www.asrock.com The Radeon RX 6900 XT currently reigns as AMD’s most powerful GPU. Asrock takes that chip, slaps on a massive triple-slot, triple-fan cooler, and cranks the clocks to levels normally only seen on the smaller Navi 22 and Navi 23 chips. It’s less about an elegant design and more of a brute force approach, but we appreciate the end result nonetheless. If it’s not immediately obvious, this card caters to extreme desktops with plenty of room. Perhaps there are some mini-ITX cases that could accommodate the card’s girth, but we’d be concerned about limiting airflow. Also, finding a mini-ITX power supply with the required triple 8-pin connectors and probably 850W of output will prove almost impossible. You could probably run the card off a 750W PSU, especially if…

$240 | avermedia.com Taiwanese ooutfit AverMedia specialises in webcams and the PW513 is a more premium version of the PW513 model. Quality is key to good video communication. After all, there’s nothing worse than your video call looking like a game of Minecraft. One thing that the PW315 suffered from was its build quality but, here, AverMedia has stepped up its game. It’s larger, heftier, and feels more rugged. Though you are unlikely to take it around with you often, if you do want to throw it in a bag for a Zoom meeting on-the-go, it’s a durable product that’s built to last. The mount is rubberised for better grip and features a typical tripod screw hole to make this compatible for other uses. The PW513 is sturdy and the…

Linux | https://zorin.com/os There are several Linux distributions that aim to provide an easy introduction to Linux for those coming from Windows. They may do this by providing a Windows-like appearance, or go deeper. Zorin OS falls into the latter category. It’s available in three versions: Core, Lite, and Pro. Core, the version we have here, is a free distribution, in both senses of the word. Lite is a lightweight version designed for older computers and available in 32-bit as well as 64-bit flavours. The Pro version is a paid product, currently costing US$30. Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu, which is clear when you run the installer. It follows the same process as the standard Ubuntu installer, even though it looks different. The same is true of the Zorin…

$289 | www.crucial.com The Crucial DDR5-4800 kit is the only 2x8 GB kit in our roundup. It’s generic and unexciting with its lower capacity and 40-39-39-77 timings but at $289 at the time of writing, it’s the cheapest DDR5 kit we could find. There’s really not much of a story to tell. It doesn’t have a heat spreader or RGB, it operates at 1.1v and it’s the kind of kit that you’d buy as a placeholder for a better DDR5 kit in the future. The problem is, $289 can get you a decent 32GB DDR4-3600 kit, and if given the choice in the current market, we’d go for the DDR4 kit. DDR5-4800 can outperform DDR4-3600 but only in a few specific circumstances. We see it beating out DDR4 in our…

$699 | www.teamgroupinc.com Now here’s a kit of DDR5! At 6,400MHz, the Teamgroup Delta RGB kit is unabashedly premium in looks, specification, and performance, and although it’s an ultra high-end kit, its list price of $699 isn’t too bad relative to other equally unobtainable DDR5 kits. Whether it ends up on shelves for $699 remains to be seen, but if it does, it’s really not all that much more than a top shelf 3600 C14 kit. The Team Delta RGB kit and its diffused RGB lighting looks great. Its opaque covering leads to a subtle good look. It’s a tall kit like the Corsair, so you’ll need to make sure your cooler is compatible with its height. When it comes to performance, it’s a tough battle between the raw bandwidth…

The Mambila people, who live across Cameroon and Nigeria in West Africa, like to watch the movements of crabs and spiders. As part of a practice called Nggam, a stick and a stone representing a binary choice are offered to the multi-legged creatures, along with some cards placed between them. This is all part of a plan to tell the future. The wisdom-seekers leave the cards intact for up to 15 minutes, during which time the crab or spider may have come out of its hole and disturbed the cards, producing a pattern that can be interpreted. If particular cards have been moved toward the stick or the stone, then that choice is bound to become reality. Elsewhere, some people still believe to this day that the position of the…

If you’ve determined your router needs upgrading, now is the perfect time to put security at the heart of your purchasing decision. And that means looking beyond consumer routers for something more suited to a SOHO environment. These types of routers receive frequent firmware updates (as opposed to none in many cases) to close security loopholes and occasionally add new features, plus they feature useful extras such as built-in VPN servers, more granular parental controls, and firewalls. While SOHO routers carry a premium, they don’t have to cost the earth. Synology’s RT2600ac (above) costs around $300 and while it’s not the quickest, it’s certainly a lot more secure than many consumer routers and is one of the most affordable routers we’ve seen supporting WPA3 encryption. Most offerings from Draytek also…

Securing your router protects the gateway to your network, but it doesn’t mean you can ignore the security of each computer or device you’ve connected to it. After all, your network is only as secure as its weakest element. Your Windows PC should be protected by the built-in Windows Security, but what about your mobiles, tablets, and other connected devices? While iOS devices don’t technically require security apps, make sure you’re running the latest version of iOS and if you have installed third-party protection on your PC, look for a mobile app such as Bitdefender Mobile Security that can highlight potential vulnerabilities and provide some email and web protection. Android devices require antivirus just like your PC, and it’s good practice to protect Macs too. Perhaps now is the time…

DVI to USB-C Long-time subscriber for more than 20 years here: I have an LG 29-inch 2K monitor, model number LG 29UM59-A. This monitor has one HDMI and one USB-C port. I have been trying to connect a second computer to the USB-C port without any success. The motherboard with the USB-C port is an MSI X370 Gaming Pro (with AMD Ryzen 1700X CPU and 32GB RAM), with an MSI GeForce GTX 750TI video card with 2GB of memory. I’m hoping to upgrade to an RTX 3070 or RTX 3080 when prices come back down to normal. I’ve tried both USB-C-to-VGA and USB-C-to-DVI adapters and neither works. I’ve not tried a direct USB-C cable yet as I do not have one. Is there some reason why these adapters don’t work?…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use the new Passwords feature in Monterey YOU’LL NEED macOS 12 or later Apple has done much in recent years to make it easier to create and use secure passwords, by adding an auto-fill feature to Safari that can suggest secure passwords and store them safely so they can be filled in automatically when you log in to particular sites. Now, in Monterey, it has gone one step further. Recognising that most of us don’t just use passwords on websites, the feature has been pulled from Safari and placed in a new Passwords pane in System Preferences. You can now see all your saved passwords there, as well as edit them, delete them, and create new ones. There’s also a…

On the Home tab, tap the Active status in the top-right. Here, you can tell Gentler if you’re taking a few days off for rest, are ill, or are injured. These statuses will tell the app not to push you to do more exercise while they are in effect, for instance by removing your activity trend line from the Home tab. You can tweak your goals in other ways. Tap the profile icon in the top-left, then tap Heart Rate Zones to change how Gentler categorises your workout levels, or tap Personal Details to change the stats the app bases its guidance on.…

This issue we’re celebrating a significant 50th anniversary that’s been overlooked by many. That milestone was the announcement by Intel of “a new era of integrated electronics” as it was heralded in the November 1971 issue of Electronics News. The advertisement was for the Intel 4004, the world’s first microprocessor. It’s no surprise that this breakthrough didn’t make it into the newspapers. Somewhat more surprising – given that computing and microprocessors are now synonymous – is that it seems much of the computing industry barely gave it a second glance, either. After all, compared even to the primitive computers of the early ’70s, it would have looked like a toy – and we’ll see something of its basic nature later on. Indeed, few would have envisaged that a microprocessor would…

IT TAKES TWO WINS GOTY AT THE GAME AWARDS It beat Deathloop, Resident Evil Village, and Psychonauts 2, among others. It Takes Two has won Game of the Year at the 2021 Game Awards. It Takes Two has a unique premise. It casts two players as soon-to-be-divorced parents Cody and May. Their daughter isn’t happy about this imminent divorce, so she transforms them into dolls with the help of Dr. Hakim, a sentient, wise-cracking self-help relationship book. What follows is a series of dramatic set pieces that all require close collaboration. “STREAMING ISN’T WORK” Says one of the world’s most successful streamers. Esports legend Shroud downplayed the effort required to be a Twitch streamer, while doing a commentary when some viewers asked if he had any intention to return to…

Free | PC, XB360 bit.ly/SkaZombies You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a throwaway joke game. And it is a joke – but hardly a throwaway. Ska Studios is committed to the bit, elevating a simple horde shooter into an interactive rock opera that celebrates its home-made status. At a basic level, you’re a little character destroying waves of advancing zombies, firstly with a veritable peashooter and then with lasers, shotguns, flamethrowers, and rocket launchers. Power-ups and zombies appear steadily on the evolving map, but soon they’re joined by deadly emoticons, green blobs, and killer diamonds, as the song enters its extended prog-rock middle section. The shooting is simple – you move with the left stick and shoot by aiming the right – with no alternate firing modes or movement…

$65.99 | PC, PS4, XB1/S/X | farming-simulator.com Farming Simulator 22 is somehow the 11th entry in this franchise. All of the games are developed by the Swiss studio Giants Software, which lovingly renders a punctilious, businesslike interpretation of heartland warmth. Upon beginning a campaign on the easiest settings, you will be gifted a barn, a house, a handful of equipment and a trio of pastures. From there, it’s up to you to determine what kind of farm you’d like to build. Every day, your farmer wakes up at the crack of dawn and immediately gets to work on a laundry list of chores. Like all simulation games, the player is instructed to find euphoria in the heuristics of a life that doesn’t belong to you. If you do not possess…

RELEASE November 16, 2004 DEVELOPER Troika PUBLISHER Activision LINK bit.ly/3p3jqFA The year of 2004 was an auspicious one for videogames. In fact, it was perhaps, a bit too auspicious for Troika, a small CRPG development house headed by ex-Black Isle veterans. Troika had to release an embattled, over budget, and unfinished game of a niche genre right smack dab in the middle of a legendary autumn, which also boasted Halo 2, Half-Life 2, and Metal Gear Solid 3. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines never stood a chance really, and ended up selling only 72,000 copies in its initial release. Afterwards, Troika struggled to find backing for subsequent projects, and were forced to close their doors in 2005. The tapes never stopped circulating though, so to speak. Strong word of mouth…

AIRTAGS USED TO STEAL CARS Apple’s Air Tags are great for locating high value vehicles. Canadian police north of Toronto have been investigating a string of grand theft auto incidents where the thieves are believed to have used Apple’s key trackers to boost high value cars. The AirTags are more reliable than Tile since Apple’s network of devices is more prolific and this extended network is being exploited by the thieves. Apple has updated iOS 14.5 to include a feature that will identify if you’re being tracked by AirTags not connected to you, but many non-tech savvy people could easily ignore these warnings. KICKSTARTER IS PUTTING PROJECTS ON THE BLOCKCHAIN A contract-based approach to crowdfunding makes a lot of sense. CEO Aziz Hasan and co-founder Perry Chen announced that Kickstarter…