Tuesday 17 November 2015

And they call this mine!

Minecraft

Minecraft has now sold over 70 million copies and is the biggest-selling oneman game of all time. Where next for the Swedish behemoth?

No one expected that the dominant game of the early 21st century would be a retro exploration game from a shy, obscure Swedish developer. But then, Minecraft surprises everyone who plays it. You start in on it, and it seems a bucolic little world you’ve dropped into. It’s a joy to run around punching animals and trees for a couple of hours, and marveling at all the stuff you’re collecting.

Super-Speed Storage

Super-Speed Storage

What’s the best storage option for you?

Once upon a time, there was just one simple solution when it came to computer storage. The everreliable, infallible spinning hard drive. That signature sound of those platters whirring into life undoubtedly roused the spirit of many a gamer, knowing that within mere tens of minutes they would be sitting comfortably, ready to load their favorite 32-bit game. It was a technology that, although archaic by today’s standards, developed exponentially for its time. First there was IDE, then there was SATA, then the second generation of SATA, and finally SATA revision 3.0, the pinnacle of SATA technology. An interconnect designed and developed to help support and provide compatibility for all future storage devices and drivers, for the next generation of HDD devices.

Turn your PC into an Android tablet

Turn your PC into an Android tablet

There are some things you can do with a PC that may not serve a great deal of practical use, but are just satisfying to do. Guest operating systems and virtual machines come under this header for most people—although there are serious applications of the technology for those developing phone or tablet apps and looking for a safe environment to test them in.

Making Minecraft Beautiful

Making Minecraft Beautiful

Possibly one of the most popular games of all time, Minecraft has provided a platform to make all sorts of weird and wonderful constructions. However, in comparison to some games power users play today, it seriously lacks graphical fidelity. Vanilla Minecraft, even with the most high of high-resolution texture packs, is hardly comparable to any modern graphical wonder. Until now. You’ve probably seen shader and light packs in Skyrim, Witcher, even GTA, but have you seen them in Minecraft? It’s a game that can benefit the most from an increase in graphical fidelity. After all, when your entire game consists of square blocks, the opportunity for shadows and other lighting to affect this voxel-based universe is astronomical. It can change your experience entirely.

Sennheiser RS 175 Wireless Headphones

Sennheiser RS 175 Wireless Headphones

If you were to ask us about gaming headsets, we wouldn’t be able to give you a definitive answer as to what they really are. Essentially, they’re just headphones with a mic attached, and usually, it’s a pretty bad mic at that. Instead, what we tend to do is focus on getting a really good set of headphones. When it comes down to it, the auditory part of a game is just as crucial as what you see on the screen. In some cases, it could be even more important.

MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK

MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK

Fantastic feature set at a phenomenal price

MSI’s Z170A gaming series has impressed us. It’s a solid lineup, boasting a variety of feature-rich gaming motherboards at a fairly sensible range of prices. The M9 ACK sits at the top end of this spectrum, but can it possibly warrant such a high price tag? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.

Aorus X7-Pro Sync

Aorus X7-Pro Sync

As loud as it is beautiful

G-SYNC laptops are coming thick and fast, so it’s with great pleasure that we introduce the Aorus X7-Pro Sync. Unearthed from the heart of Gigabyte’s notorious Aorus factories, comes this marvelous wonder of a tiny gaming powerhouse. Arguably the noisiest dual-GPU laptop ever witnessed, the X7 packs two Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M processors alongside an Intel Core i7-5850HQ, 16GB of DDR3L RAM, and a RAID 0 setup. This is the kind of laptop dreams are made of.

MSI GT72S Dominator Pro G Dragon

MSI GT72S Dominator Pro G Dragon

The red-hot GT72S is ready to dominate

For the past year, the fastest notebook GPU has been the GTX 980M. With AMD and Nvidia both stuck on the 28nm process node for 2015, most didn’t expect to see any significant changes until 2016. Shoehorning a mobile version of GM200 into a notebook seemed unlikely, as the 980M isn’t even using a fully enabled GM204, and yet it still runs into the 100W TDP limit of mobile GPUs. Faced with such an obstacle, Nvidia decided to change the game and release a notebook version of the desktop GTX 980, using a fully enabled GM204 chip.