Kill It With Water

Use Liquid-Cooling To Beat The Heat

Summer is the season of projects. Kids occupy themselves with exploring the neighborhood or undertaking an ambitious LEGO (or Minecraft, or LEGO Minecraft) creation. Adult projects are often less enjoyable, whether that’s staining the deck or renovating the 80s-era bathroom.

For PC enthusiasts, “project season” wouldn’t be complete without beginning a new adventure with their computer. The best part about a PC project is that it can be educational (learning to code), artistic (case modding), or pragmatic (setting up a NAS). Whatever you choose to do, try to make it fun. This is supposed to be a hobby, after all.

ASUS MG279Q

The Monitor Your Eyes Want Is The Monitor They Deserve

Ever been at a friend’s house or a LAN party and glimpsed a computer monitor so beautiful that you felt pangs of jealousy wash over you, to the point where you actually checked your arm to make sure you weren’t turning green? A bright, crisp monitor with excellent color reproduction is something that you can easily take for granted until you come face to face with one. But once you’ve basked in the glory of a really, really good monitor, you may as well know that it will haunt your dreams until you give in and bring one home. (This is sometimes referred to as the “The grass is always greener, until it isn’t” postulate, and it is totally not made-up science.)

Deepcool Tristellar

Set Jaw To Drop

Computer cases are supposed to be big metal boxes. We’ve practically had this belief hard-coded into our DNA. So, when a case comes along that defies this notion, we take notice. Whether we see them at an expo or a LAN party, cases with unique designs are seared into our brains.

Killing Floor 2

Time To Kill Some Zeds

Tripwire Interactive’s 2009 release Killing Floor was a squad-based shooter that dropped you and up to five friends into London following an outbreak of horrific zombie-like creatures from a biotech lab running experiments for the military. (Who would have guessed science could go so horribly awry?)

The follow-up, Killing Floor 2, is available now on Steam Early Access, and it takes the concept of the original game and turns everything about it up to 11.

Build an Android microscope

Carry a science lab in your pocket and add a USB microscope to your Android device. Darren Yates explains how

Getting greater numbers of the next-generation interested in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is one of the conundrums facing educators around Australia at the moment. Enrolments in these subjects have fallen steadily over the 20 years between 1992 and 2012, according to a recent report from the Queensland University of Technology, with its authors suggesting reasons most likely include students self-perception of ability and perceptions of subject difficulty and usefulness’ (tinyurl.com/qutstem). That’s such a pity, because I can’t think of four more interesting and fun subjects than science, technology, engineering and mathematics!

Stream your flicks to any device

Plex is a beautiful way to stream your videos and music to your TV, PC, phone, tablet and more. Simon Chester

There are many ways to consume media — that is, movies, TV shows, music and so on — on your big screen and speakers. From your Xbox, PlayStation, Apple TV, Chromecast, Boxee, WD TV and any of the lesser known media devices out there, people have been streaming digital media files to their TV in many different ways for over a decade.

A 4K video primer

What services support it, what’s coming up, what do you need to play it back? Simon Chester & Dan Gardiner

4K. Four Kay. Ultra High Definition. UHD. Forky. Puuuurdy. No matter what you call it, the replacement for 1080p HD resolution is now a standard part of the home entertainment lexicon. Like the megapixel race of the cameras of yore, and the MHz race of CPUs of even more yore, there’s been a push for higher resolution screens. And indeed, with larger TVs becoming standard, and projectors moving from ‘enthusiast’ to ‘consumer’ levels, there’s a definite need for more pixels.