Table of contents for May 2018 in PC & Tech Authority

It was science-fiction luminary Arthur C. Clarke who famously coined the phrase “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s been oft-quoted over the years because it so eloquently displays the relationship between science and understanding – while also leaving room to spark the imagination. Recently IBM revealed its latest innovation in the form of a computer the size of a grain of sand. A rather large grain, by comparison, but let’s not split hairs (which also happen to be really small) over what is clearly a remarkable achievement. And the moment I read the story I couldn’t help but think of the Technomages from Babylon 5. If you’ve watched the show, you’re already smiling, and if you haven’t a brief cap: Technomages are a secretive bunch whose abilities…

Identifying what each victim should have done to prevent a breach probably isn’t as valuable as looking at what all firms could have done to minimise the risk of such breaches. “What most of these breaches have in common is their lack of visibility into data access,” said Terry Ray, CTO at Imperva. “All major breaches, and most middle and minor ones, fail to immediately detect their breach, instead finding out weeks, months, or years after the fact, often from third parties finding breach data online.” Step one to protecting something is, therefore, watching it. “Do we find it surprising that banks have cameras not only in their public areas, but also in their vaults, arguably their most secure locations?” Terry concluded. “They have an explicit zero-trust model. Why do…

It isn’t Vegemite; you won’t either love the Surface Book 2 or hate it. But you will fall one side of a divide: you’ll either see the point of a laptop with a detachable screen or you won’t. That was true of the 13.5in version and applies equally to this 15in spin. When I say “spin”, though, I may be exaggerating things. The 15in Surface Book 2 is essentially the same machine as its smaller sibling, right down to the weird fulcrum hinge and magnificent electromagnet system that locks the screen in place. One second it’s a 15in laptop and no amount of yanking will remove the screen, but with a press of a button you’ll hear a clunk and the screen can be easily removed. The only difference between…

Gamers have never had it better, with a plethora of devices and accessories currently on the market to help them indulge in their passion. Monitors of course, are not immune from the gaming product sphere, with most manufacturers producing a range of displays made with the gamer in mind. LG’s latest monitor is a gamer’s delight, fitted out with all the specs any demanding gamer will love. The 32GK850G-B is a 31.5-inch, 2560x1440 display with a VA-type panel. A VA-type panel is the best choice for most gamers, as it retains a level of colour rendition superior to that of the cheaper TN type panels, but allows for faster refresh rates than IPS panels, which are normally used for colour accurate applications. LG’s use of a VA panel allows for…

What’s the definition of “smart” when talking about smart speakers? This isn’t a rhetorical question, because in some ways the Apple HomePod is the smartest of them all; and in some ways it’s the dumbest. In the context of Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, smart means responding to voice commands to play music or radio. It means controlling your home’s smart lights and thermostats, making voice and video calls, and asking about the weather. It means setting up timers and alarms and telling jokes on request. And, according to this definition of “smart”, the Apple HomePod falls a long way short. But that’s not the only meaning of the word and, in other ways, Apple’s answer to the Echo and Home is streets ahead. “A speaker this size simply has…

Intel and its production partner Micron have never been shy about promoting the advantages of their Optane technology. Indeed it is a potential game changer. So far we’ve seen a few products that show off just what this exciting technology is capable of. The first products were the somewhat lacklustre Optane cache drives which provided a few benefits, but they didn’t really set the world on fire. Then we saw the excellent high end 900P and its enterprise counterparts which under many workloads are simply the fastest SSDs available. Finally we have an Optane drive that the masses can sink their teeth into. The 800P that we are reviewing here is the first truly consumer oriented model and one that promises to shake up the traditional SSD market. But the…

HOW WE TEST It's important to get it right when you're choosing a gaming keyboard. After all, the keyboard and mouse are the devices with which you'll have most contact when you're playing games, as well as typing. Not every one has more than $200 to spend on the latest mechanical units, though, and not every one likes the feel and sound of mechanical switches anyway. That's where Membrane keyboards come in. Instead of having in dividual keys constructed using physical switches, membrane keyboard keys press down into a layer of plastic that stretches across the whole keyboard. Pressing down the membrane forces that plastic to connect an electronic circuit, registering key presses. That's the basic principle, but manufacturers vary their designs to enhance certain attributes. Some will replace the…

Razer’s Cynosa Chroma is one of the pricier keyboards on test this month, and Razer is making some big claims about this keyboard’s performance levels and design. For starters, the Cynosa Chroma serves up individually backlit keys that can be customised in the latest version of Razer’s Synapse software. It will also work with custom profiles in different games, so you can have game-specific lighting in Overwatch, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or Call of Duty: WWII, for example. You’re immediately thrust into the latest version of Synapse as soon as you start – simply plugging the keyboard into your USB port results in you being invited to download the beta of the latest software, so you don’t have to go and find it yourself. We were up and running within…

Crucial is playing a cautious game with its SSDs. It still hasn’t launched a consumer PCI-E NVMe SSD, and when it debuted its first 3D NAND two years ago, it did so with a mid-range product, the MX300. That drive offered good value for money and perfectly adequate performance for most users, but was noticeably slower than several other mainstream drives. Now Crucial’s back with the MX500 and, seemingly, the story remains the same. This drive sees the debut of Micron’s 64-layer 3D NAND, up from the 32-layer NAND of the MX300, but there’s still no NVMe option and this SATA version still isn’t an all-out performance model. However, while the picture doesn’t appear to have changed much, dig a little deeper and the MX500 shows it has a lot…

Just as the Samsung 850 Evo has dominated the upper end of the mainstream SATA SSD market, so the Samsung 850 Pro has dominated the professional end. Thanks to its use of MLC 3D NAND (rather than TLC), it provided long-lasting, consistently fast performance. If you didn’t necessarily want the fastest drive, but required rock-solid performance right up to the last gigabyte, all while having a reassuringly long warranty and endurance, it was the drive to get. The formula remains the same with the Samsung 860 Pro, though, as with the 860 Evo, the hardware under the hood is completely new. The cornerstone is Samsung’s new 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory; due to its use of MLC rather than TLC, this comes in 256Gb dies. These dies are joined by…

Sometimes Gaijin’s War Thunder feels like the best kept secret in gaming. Its gaming battlefield opponent World of Tanks gets all the attention, yet War Thunder has a vastly superior air game, debatably superior tank and ground game, and its naval component, while still in beta, is shaping up very nicely. It averages well over 10,000 concurrent users at any time, and has peaked at over 100,000 users playing simultaneously. And yet it feels like only those in the know, know about it. Gaijin doesn’t do much to advertise War Thunder but, mostly I imagine, people that stumble upon it have a go and love it, and many stay for the long haul. WHY WAR THUNDER ROCKS It supports combined arms, with players from around the world battling on maps…

I will freely admit - when someone asked me about this router before I knew much about it, and what made it a gaming router, I told them that it was likely a few random apps and an aggressive physical design. Maybe some RGB lighting. Otherwise, it was just a branding exercise. And then I got to the new NPG XR500 WiFirouter in action and boy howdy, was I wrong! Sure, it does kind of look like it’ll either take off or eat your face at any moment, but it is thankfully free of RGB lighting, and the features it boasts sound legitimately useful for gamers. We’ve not seen one in the Labs yet - though we’ll get one soon for review - but the product demo certainly piqued our…

You see, back prior to the NBN, it was all pretty simple. You had essentially two Broadband connectivity types, Ethernet (usually on the back of a Telstra or Optus Cable connection) or ADSL. From a manufacturers’ perspective, it was also relatively straight-forward. Any manufacturer wanting to connect their device to Telstra’s copper network (remembering that the vast majority of ADSL services, especially in the early days, were all using Telstra’s wholesale DSL service, since they owned the vast majority of the copper in the ground!) needed to pass a set of criteria which was coined IP1149, in its various iterations, as well as the mandatory standards from an electrical safety perspective, rolled up as C-Tick, and A-Tick. It cost quite a bit to get certified to these standards, well over…

Virtual is starting to fragment. As we see in this issue, as well in previous coverage, Microsoft is in deep with its Mixed Reality standard. Along with a bevy of top tier consumer electronics companies, we have several virtually identical headsets all pitched at the mainstream. And let’s not forget, too, that Microsoft is also cornering the high-end professional space with its Hololens Augmented Reality system. What began as an enthusiast gamer product, the way led by Oculus Rift (a company now owned by Facebook), has permeated every day life. Well, sort of. It’s far from ubiquitous. You would be more likely to see a smartphone VR in use when you’re out and about, and I have, but those rare sightings are limited to once seeing someone on a park…

When Facebook bought Oculus Rift for US$2 billion back in 2014, I suspect it set off familiar “we’ve missed the boat” ripples in the Microsoft boardroom. While January 2015 saw the announcement of its futuristic HoloLens, it took a further two-and-a-half years before consumers could enter Microsoft’s virtual realm: Windows Mixed Reality (WMR). It’s a bit of a shame, then, that the launch was more of a pfftt than an explosion. WMR was released as part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in October 2017, when Microsoft also announced “a range” of Windows Mixed Reality headsets. It was easier to grab Lord Lucan for a chat than to get hold of a headset to test, though, and when it came to content it was all jam tomorrow. That jam…

When LG calls the 27GK750F a gaming monitor, it’s more than just marketing speak. It’s optimised for gaming in the same way a track car is optimised for track racing. But the flipside is also true: driving to the shops in a V8 Super Car is going to cause issues. The first headline feature is a 240Hz refresh rate. It’s not the first 240Hz model we’ve seen, but it is when tied to the next two headline features – a 1080p resolution and a 27-inch panel. In computing terms, that makes for a low-resolution monitor on a very-large, veryfast screen. This is exactly the sort of thing that competitive gamers love as it theoretically makes targets larger, headshots easier while offering greater screen real-estate. But it’s that 240Hz refresh time…

Asus Republic of Gamers motherboards frequently find their way onto PC enthusiast’s shortlists. Take just one glance at it and you know you’re looking at a seriously high end motherboard. It looks rather like a blend of the full cover Sabretooth series combined with the functionality of the Apex models. Looks are only a part of it of course. Its chock full of features and it should be capable of getting the most from your Intel Coffee Lake processor. The feature list is comprehensive as you’d expect. An EK water block is a significant inclusion which gives you an idea of its target audience. As you can see, most of the board is covered on the front AND the back which adds to the look. The I/O area has an…

Sitting aloof upon its executive pedestal amid the rainbow deluge of RGB mechanical keyboards sits this. Despite its probably plain appearance on the page photo, in the metallic flesh this is a real stunner to behold. The sharp-edged base is just 4mm high, and the base slab is sufficiently – and no more – large enough for the keys. This austere look is class all over, and with the grey keys with white markings it really is a slick piece of kit. Running along the base underneath is the battery pack, which does double duty as a stand that gives it a comfortable typing angle. It is not adjustable, and its presence means you can’t lie this flat on your desk, not that you would want to. Microsoft claims four…

In Australia, LG has pushed its G-series phone as its flagship model while the morerefined V-series has been hard to source. But now the company has officially released a souped-up V30 to these shores and it looks impressive. The first thing you’ll notice is the thin, glass chassis which is reminiscent of HTC’s fancy rivals. The six-inch screen is surrounded by a thin bezel on all sides – just enough to look sharp but not so thin that simply holding it executes unwanted commands at the side of the screen when you hold it. Turning it on immediately shows off the brilliance of 6-inch OLED screen which is bright, colourful and responsive. Even when not being used, the always-on, high-contrast, time and notification icons look great floating on a jet-black…

Cooler Master’s MasterSet MS121 is the least expensive product in this Labs (along with the Razer Cynosa Chroma), and yet it’s the only keyboard that’s packaged alongside a gaming mouse. The keyboard is by far the most interesting product in the box though. Cooler Master has built this unit with the aim of mimicking mechanical switches. The hardware beneath the MS121’s plastic keycaps still uses a membrane base, but it’s otherwise designed like a mechanical switch, so there’s a spring and plunger. Hands-on time reveals that Cooler Master’s hybrid switches are the closest option on test to a true mechanical unit. The keys have the loudest typing sound of any in this group, and they certainly feel tactile like a mechanical keyboard. They don’t have a bump in the middle…

The mid-priced SteelSeries Apex 150 is a curious beast – it’s larger and stands taller than every other keyboard in this test, but its buttons are more reminiscent of a laptop keyboard than the other keyboards here. The Apex’s 105 keys use SteelSeries’ thermoplastic design, which is built for low friction and impressive stability. It has an iron base, and SteelSeries boasts about its customtuned rubber domes and custom-moulded housing for each button. Get hands on, though, and the Apex’s buttons border on the unusual. The keys have plenty of travel, and they feel heavy enough, but the action is softer than the Corsair and Razer buttons when they eventually bottom out. The soft, comfortable action is paired with the quietest typing action here too – ideal if you’re in…

The Kingston SSDNow UV400 is a couple of years old now, but it remains the company’s latest mainstream SSD option – Kingston’s performance drive is the HyperX Savage. Unlike all the other drives in this test, it’s based on planar TLC NAND rather than a form of 3D NAND, which you might think would suggest it’s at a disadvantage, given that 3D NAND is the newer technology. However, if it’s used in the right way, planar NAND can still produce good performance, so there’s certainly no reason to dismiss it immediately. That said, the UV400 is a valueorientated drive and its performance figures support that description. Available in capacities from 120GB up to 960GB, it’s one of the few drives in this test where performance does vary depending on capacity,…

For a long while, SanDisk was the only company to have a credible alternative to the supreme Samsung 850 Pro, in the shape of the very quick SanDisk Extreme Pro. However, with the company’s takeover by Western Digital, its line-up of high-performance drives has fallen by the wayside. After a fashion, the SanDisk name still lives on with the Ultra 3D, but it really is only in name, as the drive is technically identical to the drive we’re looking at here, the WD Blue 3D. Both drives, then, are aimed at the lower end of the SATA SSD market, with prices and performance figures to match. Intriguingly, Western Digital also makes the WD Green, which is an even more budget-focused range that’s only available in capacities of up to 240GB,…

Installing a new hard disk is normally easy, but the specifics vary from case to case. Simplest of all is an M.2 drive: simply push your drive into the slot, and screw the retaining screw at the opposite end into place. M.2 drives are notched, so you physically can’t insert them the wrong way around. To install a 3.5in SATA hard disk in a desktop, you’ll need to connect it to the motherboard using a 7-pin SATA data cable; these cables are reversible, and the plugs are L-shaped, so again it’s very hard to get wrong. If you’re replacing an older disk, it’s a good idea to connect the new one to the same SATA port on the motherboard. Steer clear of legacy SATA 2 ports, though, as these are…

Neil Gaiman, in his first but rather obscure book Ghastly Beyond Belief: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of Quotations, has an early section that makes fun of blurbs. The blurb for James Herbert’s Lair reads: “Frenzied mutant super-rats bloodlusting for human flesh.” Which led Gaiman to note that the author took 244 pages to say what the blurb writer managed to convey in eight words. Which neatly dispenses with the concept for Vermintide II. Except to add that this sequel builds further on Fat Shark’s “Left 4 Dead except with a Warhammer license” first outing into the world of Skaven and Rotbloods. It’s slightly more complex, panders slightly more to the current trend of “loot boxes”, but also keeps the solid mix of characters and weapons and general rat-mutilation…

If you’ve ever wondered why your thousand dollar video card can’t makes games look as pretty as, say, the latest Pixar movie, a lot of it is due to raytracing. This particularly computationally-intensive task renders reflections in great detail, and with precise accuracy. Movie studios have vast render farms and can take their sweet time to render a frame. Meanwhile your video card has to handle lighting and reflections, potentially, several times per second. So, different methods are used in gaming that are computationally ‘cheaper’. But in somewhat of a compromise step in the right direction Microsoft says it’s nearly there with a reasonable solution than brings convincing elements of genuine raytracing to games. We’ll see it in DirectX 12 towards the end of the year. Futuremark announced a raytracing…

AMD recently launched its Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G processors, which are essentially quad core Ryzen CPUs paired with a Vega graphics core onboard, finally giving AMD something to compete more directly against Intel’s consumer parts lineup that have had integrated graphics in them for many generations. AMD was clever when designing these new chips though; knowing that Intel still had the lead on performance per core on the CPU side, and knowing it (AMD) would have to remove one CCX to drop in the graphics core, it asked why go toe to toe with you opponent when you don’t have to? So, AMD crammed as much GPU into these chips as is possible given the power and thermal limits they were targeting (65W TDP). As a result,…

Over the last few months, we’ve seen an explosion in cryptocurrencies. Largely fuelled by stories about Bitcoin, which is used in the same way to represent all cryptocurrencies in the same way hoover means vacuum cleaner, there have been stories about massive overnight wealth. And that’s led to some folks seeing Bitcoin as an investment. Over recent weeks, there have been two reports coming from respected analysts that paint very different pictures. One suggested Bitcoin’s price will plummet over time, from the recent highs of about US$20,000 to less than $100. But another said Bitcoin will hit $91,000 over the next two years. Alongside those reports and analyses there are many opportunists who see an opportunity to fleece unsuspecting potential investors. One of the symptoms of this new model for…

ACER WINDOWS MIXED REALITY HEADSET $799 • www.acer.com/ac/en/au • Score: 3/5 This is the cheapestlooking WMR headset, with a striking blue design that’s positively in-your-face compared to the futuristic HP. It’s quite light, feeling identical to the Lenovo Explorer when worn. Indeed, the only way I could tell the difference with my eyes closed was by feeling the texture of the cushioning fabric on the headband. It seems highly likely that both headsets are made in the same factory, with the same design of foam around the side of the goggles. Don’t worry about this coming off, though, because it’s designed to strip away and perhaps even be replaced in the future: it unpeels like Velcro, so that’s easy enough to do. With all these WMR headsets sharing nigh-on identical…

Asus pitch the ProArt PA27AC as a “professional” monitor for anyone carrying out tasks on their computer that requires a no compromises approach to how colours are rendered. This display isn’t for gamers wanting insane refresh rates, nor is it a monitor for every day users who just want something that looks good to browse the web on. This monitor is a high-quality unit with colour accuracy in mind. The ProArt PA27AC is built around a 27-inch WQHD (2560x1440) IPS panel that supports 100% of the sRGB colour gamut and is calibrated from the factory. It also supports the HDR10 colour space if you’re using it over HDMI 2.0a. Connectivity wise, there’s DisplayPort 1.2, 2x HDMI 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.0a and 2x Thunderbolt 3 USB-C pots (1x in, 1x out).…

It won’t take you long to figure out that Synology’s new DS218j lies at the budget end of its NAS range. The white plastic box literally slides apart giving you access to internals that allow for two SATA hard disks (3.5-inch or 2.5-inch) while the (optional) screws which seal it shut are in a separate bag. So you’re essentially paying for a cheap, hollow plastic box with some circuitry inside. We approve. Over the years we’ve been served all manner of two-bay NAS devices including many, overheating, sealed units which became door-stops as soon as any part of them failed. Here, we pulled the box apart, slid in two hard drives, closed it up and turned it on. Too easy. Synology makes (very) many NAS devices. The DS218j is one…

Reviewing a card like the Asus ROG Strix RX Vega 56 is somewhat difficult at this time. Graphics cards might as well be called mining cards. Currently, gamers are being forced to pay crazy money for decent high resolution gaming performance in AAA games. Do you delay your upgrade or sell a kidney? Mining aside, Vega is actually a competent gaming GPU and Asus have produced a stellar design in the ROG Strix Vega 56. It’s an absolute beast of a card that offers an excellent feature set. It’s effectively a triple slot design, which is something to keep in mind. The Strix Vega 56 is simply miles ahead of noisy reference cards. The Asus Strix is cooler and quieter thanks to its triple dust resistant fan implementation, much larger…

The Corsair K55 is the cheapest keyboard in this Labs test, but it still looks the part – and has a solid set of features. It’s also the only keyboard in this group to have dedicated macro keys alongside the usual 105 buttons. That’s great for gaming, and the six buttons are set apart from the rest of the keys in a column on the left of the main keyboard. Those aren’t the only extra buttons either. There are four media buttons and three volume controls in the top-right portion of the device, and three small buttons are designed to record macros, change the lighting brightness and disable the Windows keys. The extra buttons add versatility, making it easy to control music playback when you’re working, and also means those…

HOW WE TEST SATA drives might not represent the glamorous end of the SSD market, but they’re fast enough to cope with large file transfers, while offering quick Windows boots and fast game loading times. Some games still take a while to load, but the bottleneck is seldom storage, unlike in the days of hard drives. What’s more, there are a couple of exciting new additions to the world of SATA SSDs. Both Samsung and Micron have released brand-new models, and while performance is still limited by the SATA interface, capacities are up and prices are set to trickle downwards. While NVMe M.2 drives can be much quicker in some tests, they also tend to be around 40 per cent more expensive. Unless you have a specific need for that…

For four years now, Samsung’s 850 Evo has reigned supreme as the go-to SSD for anyone seeking the ideal balance between performance and price. Thanks to Samsung being the first company to market with its cost-effective 3D NAND, it was able to keep the cost of its drives low. Meanwhile, the company’s nippy MGX and MEX controllers kept the drives ticking along quickly too. Not even when Crucial and Toshiba had started producing their own 3D NAND could any commercially available drive really challenge the 850 Evo. In fact, it’s only with the brand-new Crucial MX500 that Samsung has really faced a true fight. It’s just as well, then, that Samsung also has a brand-new drive of its own. The Samsung 860 Evo is Samsung’s longawaited refresh of the 850…

There are two good reasons to upgrade your hard disk. Perhaps you need more storage – or you want to speed up your PC by switching from a traditional mechanical drive to an SSD. Unfortunately, upgrading isn’t quite as simple as just buying a bigger disk and plugging it in: if you’re not au fait with the market, you’re liable to end up buying a drive that won’t do the job, or that simply can’t be used with your computer. Fortunately, the mysteries of mass storage aren’t hard to understand – and this is one of those increasingly rare upgrades that you can, in most cases, do yourself in just a few minutes, armed with nothing more than a screwdriver CAN YOU UPGRADE? The first question is whether it’s physically…

Hype fuels the technology industry. A few years from now, we will be shuttled about in driverless cars, lose our jobs to AI and robots, and forget our troubles in virtual worlds. Hyperloop will zip us across countries, chatbots will organise our lives, and drones will deliver our shopping paid for with digital currencies. Don’t buy it? You’re not alone. While we will uncover plenty of arguments against overhyped future tech, it’s worth noting that gleefully imagining a sci-fifuture isn’t foolish. Driverless cars could cut deaths from car crashes, robotics in factories could end industrial injuries, and digital currencies could give us financial freedom from the big banks. Such ideas are worth working towards, but while dreaming of a better future, we must beware the snake oil salesmen shilling technologies…

I was a relatively latecomer to my local ISP, called CIX. This was back in the 1990s – and in my defence, I was only 14. My discovery of the internet went from CompuServe to AOL and then to the famed Compulink Information eXchange, as it was once known. Introduced to CIX by a Catholic priest at my school, I soon began discussions with anyone and everyone on its conferencing system. I had ideas above my station, as you do when you’re young; not only do you think you know everything, you want to tell everyone too. Little did I know that it was the place to be at that time. It was very much akin to a night club that, once you went to it, made the other popular…