APCNovember 2025的目錄

In a surprise announcement that finds two long-time rivals working together, Nvidia and Intel have announced that the companies will jointly develop multiple new generations of x86 products together – a seismic shift with profound implications for the entire world of technology. The products include x86 Intel CPUs tightly fused with an Nvidia RTX graphics chiplet for the consumer gaming PC market, named the ‘Intel x86 RTX SOCs.’ Nvidia will also have Intel build custom x86 data centre CPUs for its AI products for hyperscale and enterprise customers. Additionally, Nvidia will buy $7.5 billion in Intel common stock at US$23.28 per share, representing a roughly 5% ownership stake in Intel. Given the traditionally long lead-times for new processors, it is rational to expect these products will take at least a…

Oh the times they are a-changin’. A few years ago, I don’t think I’d have predicted that HDDs, of all things, would be selling out, but here we are. According to global market intelligence and consulting firm TrendForce’s investigations, “nearline” HDDs are “facing severe supply shortages”, which is pushing cloud providers towards QLC SSDs. Nearline HDDs are ones used for infrequently accessed data, acting neither as cold (long-term) nor hot (rapidly accessible) storage but “It could be that some future QLC SSDs will be quick enough (and remain cheap enough) to be great value propositions for users.” something in between. They’re primarily used for data such as backups. The AI boom has meant there’s more of this storage in demand than before, to keep previous AI training data and model roll-backs,…

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for over 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 everyday 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. INDEPENDENT REVIEWS 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. That means identifying the best…

PRICE $2,750 WEB dell.com Aimed at professional users, the Dell Pro 13 Premium is a compact business laptop that’s well matched to typical workplace use where battery life matters more than raw performance. Our review configuration pairs an Intel Core Ultra 5 238V with 32GB LPDDR5X and a 512GB NVMe SSD, while the cheaper variant uses a Core Ultra 5 236V with 16GB. There’s also a more powerful (and expensive) Ultra 7 268V model. The Ultra 5 iGPU is an Intel Arc 130V, which suits productivity work and light creative tasks without the heat or bulk of a discrete GPU. All models include dual Thunderbolt 4 ports (40Gbps with DisplayPort and PD charging), one USB-A 3.2 port, HDMI 2.1, a 3.5mm headset jack and a wedge lock slot for security.…

PRICE $579 WEB rog.asus.com When is an ergonomic keyboard not an ergonomic keyboard? The ROG Falcata looks like an ergonomic keyboard, and it even has many of the usual features of boutique ergonomic keyboards, but essentially, it’s a full-on gaming keyboard that just so happens to be fully split, with optional tenting and tilting. So why go to all that bother if it’s not about ergonomics? Well, Asus says, “the unique split design allows users to detach the side of the right keyboard, retaining the left half when gaming… free[ing] up even more space for mouse movement.” At its core, the ROG Falcata is a compact 75% mechanical keyboard featuring ROG’s HFX V2 magnetic (Hall effect) switches, 8kHz polling, per-key RGB lighting, and a multifunction media wheel. It measures 327mm…

PRICE $165 WEB silicon-power.com DDR5 prices keep trending down in Australia, making a 32GB 6000 MT/s kit a great choice for AM5 builds and upgrades. For Ryzen 7000, 6000 MT/s with modest timings is still the practical sweet spot, whereas for Ryzen 9000, 6400 MT/s is slightly better if your board can handle it. Intel users can get some benefit from higher frequencies if you are running bandwidth-heavy workloads. Silicon Power’s Xpower Storm RGB is a 32GB (2x16GB) kit with a simple white heat spreader (also available in black) and a lightbar that syncs with most motherboard software. The exact kit in the lab is SP032GXLWU60FFDL, rated DDR5-6000 at CL36-46-46-86, 1.35V and PC5-48000. It supports Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO and includes a limited lifetime warranty. Installation was painless…

PRICE (IAPs $17.99/month, $149.99/year) WEB craft.do NEEDS macOS 12 or later Craft is a multi-platform application that combines different kinds of functionality found in various writing, note-taking, calendar and to-do apps. It’s free to try with a few limitations, then fairly inexpensive to subscribe to if you want all the bells and whistles. But does it provide more than the free apps you may already own? Craft takes its own approach to content creation and a quick spin through the intro videos is helpful if you’re new to the app. At the top level you have Documents, which are a canvas into which you can place all sorts of things. Every piece of content from text to images, lists and links is known as a “block” and is editable within a…

Administration isn’t just for corporate IT departments. If you’re responsible for the stability and security of any sort of computer network – even a few computers at home – you’re an administrator, whether you like it or not. So why not borrow some ideas from the world of professional IT management? Don’t think of it as taking on extra work. Putting a little effort into administration lets you focus the rest of your time and energy on being productive, rather than being distracted by unplanned troubleshooting and housekeeping tasks. Windows comes with a decent set of built-in, user-friendly management features, including account security, built-in virus protection and automatic updates. But there’s plenty more that you can accomplish by digging beneath the surface, and by downloading a few judiciously chosen third-party…

What is it? A new tool in Windows 11 that prolongs your laptop’s battery life without dimming the screen. This makes it better than the current Energy Saver in Windows (build 24H2), which isn’t adaptive and so is a much cruder tool. Can you explain what adaptive means? Yes. In technology, it describes a feature that automatically adapts to changing conditions and works differently to cope with them, without you having to alter any settings. It’s also sometimes called ‘dynamic’, such as ‘high dynamic range’ in TVs that changes brightness and contrast scene by scene. And what kind of changing conditions would affect my laptop’s power? It depends on how hard your processor and graphics card are working on different tasks. For example, if you’re browsing the web or writing…

There are a lot of Worlds of Warcraft these days. I don’t just mean the original – which fans now call ‘live’ or ‘retail’ – and the official lineup of old-school ‘classic’ servers set in various points throughout the game’s history. There have always been private servers: fanmade builds hosted unofficially, often locked to an old patch or with major changes. And though they’re typically snug in the underground with a few hundred players or so to their name, one relatively new server has been turning more heads. Around 72,000 simultaneously, in fact, at its current peak player count. That number comes from Akalix, the community manager on Turtle WoW. Named for a design philosophy that favours slow-paced, social gameplay over intense dungeon crawls and showers of disposable loot, the…

PRICE $43.95 PLATFORM PC, PS5 WEB tinyurl.com/APC551sword Long story short: Sword of the Sea’s surfing feels great. Whether it’s blazing across rolling sand dunes with a pack of dolphins in tow, zooming down a snowy slope into a ski jump, or cresting the waves and leaving a foaming trail in your wake, I really feel like Giant Squid has achieved something special here. Though linear, each of the game’s areas offer up big open spaces you can take time surfing around while also solving the puzzles needed to progress – not that any of the puzzles are particularly hard. It’s very much an atmospheric surfing game, emphasis on the atmosphere, as you enjoy the scenery and soundtrack (both of which are stellar, by the way), and the freestyle way you…

PRICE $18.95 PLATFORM PC, XBS/X WEB tinyurl.com/APC551rock The core action of DRG:S is deceptively simple. Your dwarf miner is dropped onto an alien asteroid and tasked with mining for resources and surviving against escalating hordes of bugs. Your weapons fire automatically, and as you level up you’re able to add new guns and fine-tune them with stat upgrades and modifiers. DRG:S’s special sauce is found in its environments. Each stage is its own randomly generated cavern, and your dwarf’s pickaxe allows them to burrow through the rock walls, creating their own tunnels and arenas. This is where combat gets tactical, because most bugs don’t have that ability. As the swarms chase you, you’re able to shape the landscape against them, escaping down tunnels, creating bottlenecks, or leading them in circles.…

Audio engineers will tell you a piece of music has ‘that Pro Tools sound’. The track sounds cleaner, glossier, but overly digitised and brimming with artifice, they’ll say, as you nod politely before being handed your change at the bar, putting a hand on their shoulder and giving them an ‘enjoy your night, mate’ before walking off. In a similar way, PC gamers have all become accustomed to ‘that Unreal Engine look’. You know the one. Really blurry textures for a half-second when your save game first loads. A faint plasticky look to every surface. More bloom than a garden centre. There are specific reasons UE games tend to look a certain way, like the material defaults that many developers don’t change, and the multiplicative lighting solver that illuminates spaces…

Not another sort of AI – is there no end to them? None in sight yet! And while not all AI-related “innovations” are actually distinct and useful, agentic AI does deserve a label of its own. To define our terms, “agentic” refers to the pre-AI concept of an agent – a piece of software that acts automatically, without requiring a human to click its buttons. Early agents usually took care of simple tasks such as installing updates or blocking viruses, following fixed rules or instructions beamed over the network, but the new generation of AI agents are far more autonomous. They can use multi-step reasoning, act proactively and improve based on past experience. So the AI just decides for itself what to do? Not exactly: AI agents are usually tailored…

PRICE $2,499 WEB tinyurl.com/APC551proart When we saw the 32-inch 6K PA32QCV at Computex, the specs alone sounded mind-blowing. Now that we’ve been living with it for weeks, does it fulfil its potential? The core benefits of having a 6K professional display are that videographers shooting in 6K can see all their footage at once and that those shooting in 4K can see all their footage, plus all of their video editing toolbars, at the same time. These productivity benefits alone will be enough for some videographers to justify buying the 6K PA32QCV. It has a solid, classy, (easy to fit-together) metal stand that will blend into any stylish studio. It comes with high-end HDMI and Thunderbolt cables which you’ll likely need to avoid the screen occasionally blacking-out (as we discovered…

PRICE $349 WEB www.corsair.com For newcomers to keyboards with magnetic, Hall effect switches, the Corsair Vanguard Pro 96 is a showcase of what next‑gen input can feel like. Drawing inspiration from Dutch startup Wooting and its revolutionary Wooting 60HE keyboard, the Vanguard Pro 96 delivers magnetic precision with every keystroke, paired with the quality and reliability you’d expect from a top brand like Corsair. Thanks to Corsair’s hot-swappable MGX Hyperdrive magnetic switches, the Vanguard Pro 96 delivers an ultra-smooth, linear-like typing experience. Unlike traditional mechanical switches that use metal contacts, Hall effect switches rely on magnetic sensing for actuation. Because of this, gamers can take advantage of Rapid Trigger functionality for repeated key presses without fixed reset points and with minimal latency. You can also set your own incredibly-precise actuation…

KEY Budget build Pick these parts if you want to build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. Mid-range build For productivity power and running every new game at 1080p 60fps. This recommended build will see you through. Advanced build You’re looking for the best PC on the market and superior components. But you still want to spend smart. BUDGET BUILD Enjoy 1080p gaming and most tasks without breaking the bank. MOTHERBOARD B760M Steel Legend WiFiAsrock $249 This board is affordable, DDR5 ready, and packed with features, including Wi-Fi support. PROCESSOR Core i5 13400F Intel $225 With ten cores, six of them the Performance kind, this Raptor Lake Core i5 is fantastic value and a great all-rounder. GRAPHICS CARD Radeon RX 9060 XT 8 GB AMD $499 AMD delivers…

LIBREOFFICE WRITER Change the colour of non-printing characters LibreOffice 25.2, released in February, lets you change the colour of non-printing characters in Writer documents. These are formatting characters like a dot to denote a space; pilcrow (¶) to mark a new paragraph; and –› to indicate where you’ve pressed the Tab key. By default these appear as grey or light blue, which can make them hard to spot. To change the colour, click Tools, Options, then expand LibreOffice on the left. Now click Appearance (1 in our screenshot above) and in the Items dropdown menu choose ‘Writer Non-printable characters’ 2. Now pick a colour in the dropdown menu 3 and click OK at the bottom. We chose ‘Dark Red 1’, and our characters changed colour accordingly 4. MICROSOFT WORD Add…

Call of Duty has been around the block a few times, and across the years it’s turned a lot of foreign countries into videogame enemies. In contemporary or near-future games, though, that can be problematic, as former Call of Duty director Glen Schofield realised when he was promoting the first incarnation of Modern Warfare 3. “I was doing 30 days of press for Modern Warfare 3,” he tells us during a wide-ranging chat about his history with the series. “I’m all over the world, and the last stop is in the UK, and I’m having dinner with some journalists from the UK and I get a call. They say, ‘We need you to go to Russia tomorrow and do some more press.’ And by then, I was really tired. I’m…

PRICE $36.50 PLATFORM PC, Switch, PS4/5, XBS/X WEB tinyurl.com/APC551ninja Well, this is a nice surprise. Previous Ninja Gaiden games have been about as warm and welcoming as being booted down a flight of stairs. But Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound has pulled off a fun revival that’s far and away the most accessible Ninja Gaiden yet. And by ‘most accessible’ I mean ‘it waits a few hours before repeatedly kicking you in the face’. Hey, it’s a start. The Game Kitchen has slammed an adrenaline shot into 2D Gaiden and made a game that’s far more interested in keeping your murderous momentum up than just repeatedly killing you. Enemies leap on screen and you’re encouraged to slice them in two before they’ve even finished their intro animation. Ideally, you’re doing this while…

Handheld PCs aren’t a new phenomenon. Atari’s Portfolio released in 1989, for example, with a full keyboard and a modified version of DOS called DIP-DOS that allowed it to more or less run as an IBM-compatible PC. Hewlett-Packard released the HP-95LX two years later which ran on DOS itself. But it doesn’t feel like devices like those have been at the heart of PC culture, or even in particularly high usage, throughout the platform’s long history. HAVE YOU PLAYED STARDEW VALLEY ON A HANDHELD GAMING PC? Not until 2022, when Valve released the Steam Deck. As soon as the company behind Half-Life gave us a glimpse of what looked like a futuristic Game Gear and flexed its gigantic brand power biceps, we seemed to decide that handheld gaming PCs were…

Commodore was once one of the world’s biggest names in computing. In its golden years, it sold more computers than Apple, IBM and Atari. That success was founded on the 8-bit Commodore 64, the best-selling single computer model of all time, while the 16-bit Commodore Amiga is a legend in its own right. That machine was powerful enough to drive the visual effects for the popular sci-fi series Babylon 5. ““We have completed the acquisition of Commodore.” As he spoke, the details of the deal became clearer. The price was “in the low seven figures” and it had been funded, in part by angel investors.”” But Commodore’s fall came almost as rapidly as its rise. It filed for bankruptcy in 1994 and saw its liquidated assets sold to Escom, which went bust two…

In the classic film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either the 1956 or 1978 version – they’re both good), aliens infiltrate society by replacing human beings with sinister clones. Which is not dissimilar to the way malicious browser extensions are masquerading as legitimate tools, so they can steal users’ data and infect their PCs. Barely a week goes by without new reports of dodgy Chrome extensions somehow evading Google’s ‘strict’ security checks and threatening millions of users. Some of these nasty add-ons pretend to be popular tools such as VPNs, AI assistants and video downloaders (see tinyurl.com/APC551fake). Others are maliciously modified versions of existing extensions that have been sold or abandoned by the original developers. Either way, they’re becoming more prevalent and – like the ‘pod people’ in Body Snatchers…

Electronic Arts has announced that its plans to go private have gone ahead. A consortium that includes Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, alongside the private equity firm Silver Lake, has snapped up EA in a $83 billion deal. The $83 billion deal also now cements EA as the biggest ever leveraged buyout, usurping the $68 billion buyout of Texas utility group TXU in 2007. For reference, a leveraged buyout is when a private equity firm uses a large amount of borrowed money to finalise the deal, with what is to be acquired used as collateral in the debt, effectively leaving the bought-out company liable for the debt. The company’s future income will be used to repay the debt over a period of time.…

Antigravity A1 PRICE $TBC WEB antigravity.tech Described as the world’s first 8K 360 drone, the Antigravity A1 has everything you need to create amazing aerial footage in glorious Ultra HD video quality. Available from January 2026, the Antigravity A1 comes in three parts: the A1 Drone, which can shoot footage forwards, backwards, above and below all at the same time; the Grip Motion Controller, which promises to make flying easy, even for newbies; and the Vision Goggles, which enables you to see exactly what the drone sees. Created by Insta360 – the same people responsible for action cameras such as the new GO Ultra – the A1 seamlessly stitches together the scenes it captures from each of its cameras, both when viewing live and when editing later, and you can…

PRICE $TBA WEB acer.com This month we got hands-on with Acer’s TravelMate P4 Spin 14, running the 2025-launched Intel Core Ultra 7 255U – a mid-range CPU aimed at office workflows that include lighter creative tasks and frequent multitasking. Our configuration includes 64GB of DDR5 RAM, but the Spin 14 also stands out with 2-in-1 flexibility that lets it operate in tablet and tent modes (with a pen) for sketching and meetings. Sure, it’s not the slimmest or the most eye-catching, but you get a sturdy build that includes practical touches that will be appreciated in daily use. Our unit has an excellent 14in 2880 x 1800 IPS touchscreen rated at 340 nits brightness and 100% sRGB, but be aware that some variants have a lesser 1920 x 1200 touch…

PRICE $544 WEB www.draytek.com.au If you’re not familiar with Draytek, it’s an old-school router maker that makes old-school routers that use old-school user interfaces along with bleeding edge security, privacy and VPN technologies for modern businesses. I could review the latest model, the SMB-focused Vigor2136ax, by simply listing all the relevant code numbers and acronyms that define it. So, let’s see if we can humanise what’s on offer... The basic-looking router thumbs its nose at rivals which take their design cues from furniture, robot crabs and space ships. It has a 2.5GbE WAN port a 2.5GbE configurable WAN/LAN port and three Gigabit LAN ports. There are also two USB ports that can be used for connecting an FTP server, print server, thermometer or 4G failover adapters. It supports Wi-Fi 6…

PRICE $TBA WEB sapphiretech.com It’s been over a decade, but Sapphire is back with a new motherboard – the Nitro+ B850A WiFi 7. It’s an AM5 board pitched at builders who want dependable power delivery, fast storage options and a clean, simple setup. It’s ideal for Ryzen 9000 processors, as well as 8000 and 7000 series chips and uses an ATX layout with four DIMM slots for dual channel DDR5. For those wanting something smaller, Sapphire has also released the micro-ATX Nitro+ B850M WiFi with similar specs. In a nutshell, if you need a home for a Ryzen CPU, loads of memory and quick NVMe drives, or you like to tune BIOS settings for a little extra performance, this board is for you. The memory setup uses the conventional four…

AI ASSISTANT WiseX 1.01 A new AI assistant you can use on your desktop. NEEDS Windows 10 or 11 WEB www.wisecleaner.com/wisex.html From the company behind the free software Wise Disk Cleaner and Wise Program Uninstaller (see our Best Free Apps feature in APC 549), WiseX is a new AI assistant you can use on your desktop. Rather than limit you to its own set of large language models (LLMs), it lets you switch between multiple AI tools without having to open their apps or websites. Options include OpenAI’s GPT 4-o, Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and the Chinese-owned DeepSeek. The latter may raise eyebrows, but by accessing the LLM through WiseX (without a DeepSeek account), you’ll avoid the privacy concerns surrounding the DeepSeek app and website. Several AI tools, including Hugging…

Whether you want to buy a new PC or build one yourself, squeezing the most out of your budget is a challenge akin to four-dimensional chess. Every decision you make has repercussions, some of which may not show themselves until three years down the line. This article is here to help. Based on my own 25 years’ experience reviewing desktop PCs, responses from PC vendors and an interview with our very own Lee Grant, I aim to cover the big questions, the pitfalls and squeeze in a few handy tips. While you can visit sites such as PCPartPicker (pcpartpicker.com), which is a great starting point as it does an excellent job of ensuring your parts are compatible, this – like all “configure it yourself” systems – assumes you know roughly…

The Windows PowerToys date all the way back to the days of Windows 95. Those who were lucky enough to have internet access in those days could download a set of 15 little utilities that enabled them to tweak the Windows interface, customise their context menus, enhance CD-ROM features and personalise the operating system in various other ways. Since then, the PowerToys suite has been through several iterations, with features appearing and disappearing over time; with Windows 10 it was relaunched as a set of open-source tools, distributed via GitHub and the Microsoft Store. It’s also evolved from a collection of standalone utilities into a single download with a unified front end, from which you can easily activate, deactivate and manage all the various components. You can install the suite…

Easy-to-follow workshops and expert tips IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU’LL NEED Fences 6 Everyone knows how tough it can be to focus on an important job when you have a lot on your mind. It can be even worse when you’re trying to focus in an untidy, cluttered environment. It’s not because we’re weak-willed, either: it’s a scientific fact. In a 2011 study (tinyurl.com/APC551focus), researchers at Princeton University’s department of psychology found that “multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout the visual cortex”. Or, in layman’s terms, with so many things competing for your attention, you don’t know what to focus on first. There is a counter-argument to this – that an untidy environment can actually…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to get on top of notifications YOU’LL NEED An Apple silicon Mac with macOS 15 or later (for Apple Intelligence features) Notifications are a blessing and a curse. They can be useful in reminding you of events and letting you know what’s going on, but you can receive so many they start losing their impact and quickly become annoying. Rather than turn them all off, however, it’s worth spending some time getting on top of them. You can turn off the notifications you don’t want but manage and control those you do so that they work more effectively. You can even get Apple Intelligence to help you. There are some pre-emptive measures you can take too. It’s easy to visit a website and accidentally…

1 month BATTLEFIELD 6 RELEASE October 10, 2025 DEVELOPER Battlefield Studios Multiplayer and singleplayer FPS action returns in the new all-out warfare experience. Drive tanks, fly planes and helicopters, as well as shoot on foot with your squad. VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE – BLOODLINES 2 RELEASE October 2025 DEVELOPER The Chinese Room Fight your way through a modern-day Seattle on the brink of an open war as an elder vampire. The long-awaited first-person World of Darkness RPG is almost here. Hype! THE OUTER WORLDS 2 RELEASE October 29, 2025 DEVELOPER Obsidian Entertainment Further interplanetary action and adventure from Obsidian, with both a revolution and an invasion taking place in a galaxy that reacts to your decisions. 2 months EUROPA UNIVERSALIS V RELEASE November 4, 2025 DEVELOPER Paradox Tinto Paradox Interactive’s flagship…

PRICE $29.50 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X, Switch/2, Mac, Linux WEB tinyurl.com/APC551silk Finally it’s here, and I’ve spent over 25 hours with the videogame equivalent of sticking your hand into the Dune pain box. Silksong may be one of the most painful 2D action games I’ve played, and the worst part? I inflicted that pain on myself by pressing forward until I’d seen just about every inch of the bug-inhabited land of Pharloom. I may be bruised and sore from the experience, but I’m happy to say that for all the pain Silksong put me through, it was worth it. Every shortcut and secret area contextualises the horrors you face in the bigger, sadder picture. A pristine dining room in the upper chambers of the citadel hides a kitchen caked in…