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Posts Tagged ‘ram’

It’s more a work of art than a PC

You can’t truly appreciate the paint job on Falcon Northwest’s Mach V unless you can fondle it. We mean it—you just can’t comprehend how damn smooth the paint is without lovingly stroking your hand on the side of this beauty as if you were a presidential candidate.

Inside the Mach V, you’ll find a pedigree of hardware to match its stunning exterior. Intel’s top gun—the 3.3GHz Core i7-3960X—gets top billing, of course. This hexa-core chip simply makes all other chips before it—quad- or hexa-core—seem downright weak. Falcon mates the chip with … [Read More...]

A deluxe board with an enthusiast price tag

Let’s be frank: If you’re even thinking about buying into Intel’s deliciously fast LGA2011 platform this early, you are an enthusiast—Enthusiast with a capital-freaking-E, since you can’t even look at LGA2011 without buying a $550 chip.

So if you’re jumping in, you might as well use both feet. Asus’s P9X79 Deluxe certainly fits that bill, delivering cool features and a stout price tag: This X79-based board will set you back a cool $400.

“Deluxe” features on board include digital VRMs, Asus’s trademark UEFI, and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, with a bundled smartphone … [Read More...]

To call HP’s 2560p an “ultraportable” is pushing it. It has a slightly smaller footprint than the Toshiba R830, with a screen size of 12.5 inches, but it’s heavier by more than a pound. With its power brick, you’re looking at more than five pounds, including a battery that protrudes a full inch from the back of the notebook’s body. This is no dainty package.

Of course, it feels like a machine that can take its licks. HP likes to point out that the notebook is designed and tested to meet Mil-Spec standards for drops, temperature shock, and altitude changes, … [Read More...]

The Portégé puts the third accent on battery life

There was a time when Toshiba’s line of Portégé business ultraportables was the epitome of sleek utility, particularly in the days of the R500 and R600. Samsung stole some of that show when it released the Series 9 (reviewed here)—the closest a PC has come to a MacBook Air to date. But while the Portégé R830, much like the R700 before it, won’t win any design contests, it offers many useful amenities in a very-portable package.

Costing exactly the same as the Series 9, the 13.3-inch R830 trumps that fancy lad … [Read More...]

Microsoft has been pretty clear in its message regarding the system requirements for Windows 8. If it will run Windows 7, it will run Windows 8. Promising to add new features, all while keeping the OS footprint steady is no easy task, but why stop there. In a blog post yesterday, Microsoft announced isn’t looking to just hold the line on resource usage; they actually believe it’s possible to make Windows 8 even more efficient than 7. When compared to Vista….. lets not go there.

According to Windows 8’s lead designer Steven Sinofsky, “Fundamentals such as memory usage represent a … [Read More...]

Panasonic has updated its Toughbook C1 convertible tablet PC with a second-generation Intel chip. The upgraded C1, which lays claim to being the lightest 12.1-inch convertible tablet, features a Core i5-2520M vPro 2.50GHz processor as opposed to the 2.4GHz Core i5-520M found inside its predecessor. Hit the jump for detailed specs.

The Sandy Bridge processor is not the only thing that gives the latest model an edge over its predecessor. Here is a list of some of the other upgraded features:

• 320GB 7200rpm shock-mounted flex-connect hard drive with quick-release
• RAM:  2GB DDR3 (1333MHz) RAM (expandable to 8GB)
• Battery Life: Up

… [Read More...]

From the caliber of their parts to the breadth of their abilities to their unconventional shapes and sizes, today’s small form factor PCs are a tasty treat for power users

It has long been considered common wisdom that the smaller the size of a PC, the greater its compromises. Notebooks, no matter how fat, for example, will never touch the power of a desktop machine.

The same held true for small form factor rigs. But is that still the case? To find out how today’s SFF rigs compare with their full-size desktop brethren, we tasked five top PC makers with … [Read More...]

We set out to build a Sandy Bridge box that takes up little space in our entertainment center and fulfills all our streaming needs

Back in the August 2010 issue of Maximum PC I built a 3D HTPC that I was pretty damned happy with, but the times have changed. The CableCard quad tuner that was featured prominently in that machine is no longer needed, as I have joined the ranks of the Cable Cutter Movement™. So without the need for a CableCard, I wondered if I could build a rig with all the same capabilities but make it much, … [Read More...]

Can we build an AMD machine—any AMD machine—that can compete with an Intel-powered rig?

In the forever war between CPU vendors, AMD and Intel have traded places many times—one leads, then the other. Since the advent of Intel’s Core i7, though, AMD hasn’t been able to touch the performance of Intel’s high end, and Sandy Bridge further increases the gap. But, well, you couldn’t buy Sandy Bridge motherboards when I wrote this build-it story in February for the May print issue—something about a bad chipset—and I’d been meaning to build an AMD-powered machine for a while now—with CrossFire, even. Why? … [Read More...]

There are many ways to shut down and restart your computer: Power-Off, Reboot-Button, Hibernate and Sleep. But which does what and which should you use when ?

The answer depends mostly on you. Are you into saving energy or boot-up time? How often do you leave your computer and for how long ? There are three main shut down options available in your Windows: Shut-Down, Sleep and Hibernate. There is also a fourth one called; Hybrid Sleep, which is a combination of the two.

Let’s explore the topic.

Environmental friendly

If your concern is to save energy, and you don’t … [Read More...]

Whether you’re an Italian renaissance cosplayer or a Starcraft II addict, you’ll love our $1,400 gaming rig. Parts, prices, and procedures inside!

How do you know when it’s time to replace your gaming rig? When you’ve turned down all of the game settings to minimum and you still have to play at 1024×768. Or you’ve just completed the Steam hardware survey and Valve rejects your score because it’ll drag down the curve. Of course, if you’re asking the question in the first place….

In spec’ing this year’s gaming build, we decided to restrict ourselves to a budget of approximately $1,400. … [Read More...]