Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i Maximum PC

AS WE COVER in this issue’s news (page 8), both AMD and Nvidia are now starting to release their mainstream GPUs, by which I mean the ones an average person might actually be able to afford. Yes, the last couple of years of having to pay four figures for a graphics card looks like it’s coming to an end. But not everyone’s happy, as our columnist Jeremy Laird points out this month in his Trade Chat on page 13, with his critical eye aimed particularly at the 4060 cards from Nvidia, which may start at $300, but still don’t offer great value compared to their predecessors. On the day I’m writing this, Nvidia has just become the first US chip maker to top a $1tn valuation. This came off the back…

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE has moved front and center with dizzying rapidity. Adobe is going all-in with a new generative AI fill engine called Firefly, which has been trained on a mass of Adobe stock and public domain images. If you’ve seen what Dall-E is capable of, you’ll understand why this is a such a powerful tool. You simply select an area or object and use a text prompt to describe what you want. A demonstration shows the phrase ‘classic car from the 50s’ producing just that. The images match the lighting, perspective, and even add reflections. The generated images are created in a new layer, so you can experiment non-destructively. How much do you need to change before it becomes ‘your’ image? Can AI-generated art ever belong to anybody? The US…

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this generation of graphics. The RDNA 3 architecture probably hasn’t met AMD’s expectations, but it’s far from a trainwreck in technological terms. As for Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, actually it’s fantastic. The RTX 4090 delivers around 60 to 70 percent more performance than its predecessor, the RTX 3090, which itself was monstrously powerful. Had that generational performance boost extended down through the rest of the RTX 40 family, which now comprises five GPUs with the addition of the RTX 4060 Ti, we’d have one of the best GPU architectures ever. But that hasn’t happened. In fact, with each successive launch, the RTX 40 series has looked worse. The RTX 4080 offers a decent boost over the RTX 3080, but at a huge price premium.…

IF YOU’RE USING an Nvidia GeForce graphics card like us, then you’ll of course be accustomed to the Nvidia GeForce Experience application. This is vital to ensure that you can use your GPU properly and keep it running at its best. Without drivers, the card wouldn’t be able to function correctly as the driver is what allows the computer to communicate with the graphics card in the first place. As we’re intending to use our system for both work and gaming, it leaves us in a bit of a predicament. Which driver shall we use, or can we use both? What even are these drivers, you may ask? Well, within the GeForce Experience application, there are options for a Game Read Driver (the default option) or a Studio Driver. So what’s…

If you’ve ever wondered where all your drive space has gone, it can help to visualize your drive in such a way that large files are revealed, however deep they’re nested inside folders. There are several tools out there that can ‘map’ your drive in this way, but our favorite is TreeSize Free (www.jam-software.com/treesize_free). Download the free version—you have a choice of installer or portable build—and launch it. For full access to your system drive, click ‘Start TreeSize Free as Administrator’ when the main screen appears. Next, click the Select Directory button to select a drive or folder to scan and wait while a folder list is generated, with folders displayed in order of size. One caveat: your user folder may be listed as being much larger than it actually is,…

If you’re considering reinstalling Windows, then why not save yourself a lot of post-reinstall work optimizing your system by building a customized install disc that ditches all the unwanted elements? The tool for the job is NTLite (www.ntlite.com). After installation, choose the free, non-commercial license. Next, download the latest ISO installer file for your version of Windows (www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11). After launching NTLite, click the Add button on the Image tab of the menu and choose ‘Image (ISO, WIM, ESD, SWM)’ to open your downloaded ISO file in read-only mode. When it appears in the list, expand the Operating systems dropdown menu to reveal the different editions available. Double-click your edition (Typically Windows 11 Home or Windows 11 Pro), and click OK. Wait for your selected edition to be written to the cache—when…

WhatsApp has added several new features in the last year that make you invisible—not from companies that want to collect your data, but from other people. For example, you can hide the fact that you’re online, so you don’t get bothered with messages at inconvenient times. To do so, open Settings in the app and tap Privacy. Press ‘Last Seen & Online’ and, in the ‘Who can see my last seen’ section, choose either Nobody, to be invisible to everyone, or ‘My contacts except…’ to select people to hide your last-seen status from. Choose ‘Same as last seen’ (see screenshot) under ‘Who can see when I’m online’ to apply the same setting to your active online status. You can also hide your profile photo and About information from other people.…

1. ENABLE MOTION DETECTION To start recording whenever the currently selected camera detects movement, you first need to set Recording Mode to ‘Motion Triggered’ in the Movies section. 2. MOVIE SETTINGS Make sure ‘Movie Format’ is set to a compatible format so you can review footage and download it to your PC. In most cases, the basic ‘H.264 (.mp4)’ option is the best one. 3. FRAME CHANGE THRESHOLD This determines how sensitive the camera is to motion detection, with 0 the most sensitive (and so liable for more false positives). Experiment with different levels between 2 and 20 to find a happy medium. 4. MOTION GAP The setting tells motionEye how long to wait after motion has been detected before it ends recording—the default is 30 seconds. 5. IMAGE MASK…

YOU’LL NEED THIS SYNCTHING (https://syncthing.net) plus at least two networked devices running one of Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, or NAS (Synology or QNAP) WANT TO KEEP TWO OR MORE FOLDERS in sync across multiple devices? Looking for a quick and easy way to set up a shared folder without having to worry about networking protocols (never mind file and folder permissions)? Interested in a file-sharing solution that works over the internet with friends and family? Or how about setting up a secure backup, one that can be encrypted before it’s transferred so your data is untouchable on any device you back up to? Syncthing covers all these bases. It’s a continuous file synchronization app, which means you simply copy a file into a monitored folder, then Syncthing will automatically (and…

If you’re uncomfortable with using relays to sync data over the internet, there are several ways you can avoid using them. First, check your router’s port forwarding settings at both ends of any remote connection. If UPnP is enabled, the ports should already be opened. If this isn’t the case, go into your router’s setup utility, and create rules to forward port 22000 on both TCP and UDP to the IP address of any one device running Syncthing on your local network. We recommend choosing one that’s on 24-7 (such as your NAS or server), as all the other devices on your network will connect through that if necessary to avoid the use of a relay. You may also need to check that your PC’s firewall is configured to allow…

I’VE SADLY NOT been at Computex this year, but over in Taiwan, slapping ‘brains’ on all your PC components looks like it’s the theme of the show. Both Corsair and Hyte are launching new smart control systems for PC builders, which will help us keep tabs on everything that’s going on in our systems. That’s alongside full cooling and lighting ecosystems, fans, AIO cooling solutions, and RGB lighting strips to match. Anyone who has used Corsair gear before will be familiar with its iCue software, but its new link hub and cooling ecosystem will feed case fans into a System Hub—a “brain” that controls everything with one wire. What it means is that you’ll be able to read not just the system’s temperature, but the temperature of each fan individually.…

THE INTEL Core i3-13100F comes to market with big shoes to fill; its predecessor, the Core i3-12100F, built a reputation as the best budget CPU for gaming. Intel is looking to repeat that success, but perhaps the Core i3-13100F follows in the footsteps of its predecessor too closely—the company repurposed the previous-gen design for the Core i3-13100, so it has the same four p-cores paired with an ever-so-slightly-improved 200 MHz higher boost clock of 4.5 GHz. The 13100F addresses the sub-$150 budget segment, so pricing is critical. However, while Intel launched the previous-gen graphics-less Core i3-12100F at $104, it quietly raised pricing. Naturally, that leads to higher prices for the new Core i3 models. As such, Intel’s recommended pricing has jumped to $144 for the Core i3-13100 model and $119…

NEW PRODUCTS and advancements are coming out quicker than we can comprehend, so we may overlook slightly older products. In reality, there are plenty of last-gen devices that are more than capable of turning back the clock. This model of Alienware X17 R2 boasts some powerful innards, but can it still prove to be a competitor in the current gaming laptop market? Due to its 17-inch display, this is a behemoth of a laptop, but Alienware has done a great job of disguising this by giving it a sleek design. The color scheme is a classy matte white outer with matte black inside. Coated in a soft-touch plastic finish, it also evades the cheap feel you might associate with plastic. There is barely any flex, creaks, or screen wobble, giving…

THE STEELSERIES Apex 9 TKL was a keyboard that certainly had something going for it, but was let down by not making the most out of the optical switches it came installed with. Naturally, SteelSeries released the Pro variant to hopefully resolve this issue, and that’s what we have here—the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Wireless. This board comes with more adjustable magnetic switches (yes, there is a difference), for swifter speed. Does this Pro and wireless variant warrant the increased price tag? Kicking things off, we have to mention the performance of this board and its stand-out trait, the speed. The actuation can be adjusted anywhere between 0.2mm and 3.8mm, in increments of 1mm. For us, it’s as far as we’d like to go in either direction. Something as tiny…

AFTER WHAT feels like an interminable wait for new affordable graphics cards, AMD has released the Radeon RX 7600, while Nvidia has unveiled the RTX 4060 series. The Radeon RX 7600 is aimed at 1080p gaming, and brings us an RDNA 3 GPU at $269 for the reference card. It had been expected to launch at $299, but then Nvidia announced its RTX 4060 would be $299. This was lower than rumored, so AMD shaved $30 off the price. At its heart, the 7600 runs a Navi 33 GPU with 32 compute units, 2,048 shaders, 32 ray tracing units, and 64 AI cores. It has a game frequency of 2,250MHz, a maximum boost of 2,625MHz, 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and 32MB of Infinity Cache. There’s a 128-bit data bus, giving a…

SONY HAS A NEW HANDHELD, currently known internally as Project Q. It looks, essentially, like an 8-inch LCD 1080p tablet with half of a PS5 DualSense controller attached to either side. It enables you to play games streamed from your PlayStation 5 via Wi-Fi, so you have access to your full library whenever you’re in range of your Wi-Fi. You’ll need a strong signal, as there’s data to shift, plus at least 5Mbps of bandwidth, although 15Mbps is recommended for a “better play experience”. The game needs to be installed on your PS5. Project Q may stream, but there’s not a cloud in sight. It is not a traditional gaming handheld either, as there are no games stored on it. There are other remote play devices, but they can be…

These aren’t without foundation. We first started seeing high-end graphics cards with 8GB of memory in 2013 with AMD’s R9 290/290X. Nvidia’s GTX 1070 and 1080 had 8GB as well in 2016, starting at $379 for the base model 1070 cards. Seeing a $399 graphics card like the RTX 4060 Ti that still uses 8GB creates concerns that it will fall behind. The problem is one of balanced design. It was probably two years ago when AMD and Nvidia began firming up specifications for these GPUs. By packing in more cache, the mainstream GPUs could get away with a 128-bit memory interface. Nvidia says the 4060 Ti’s 32MB cache is 52 percent more effective than the 4MB L2 cache on the previous generation RTX 3060 Ti. AMD says its 32MB…

> Media subtitles editor > Combine security tools > Play classic games Burning subtitle question I followed your guide to media streaming, but am frustrated at having to download subtitles for HD movies in Jellyfin rather than use the embedded subtitle track. I know of a program for the Mac called Subler, which automatically converts image-based subtitles into a text-based format that’s compatible with the MP4 container. Is there a Windows equivalent that can do this job for me? —George Hilton THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Sadly, despite the Doc’s best efforts, he’s yet to find an alternative to Subler on the Windows platform. However, if you’re willing to put in a bit more effort, then it is possible to achieve what you want. You’ll need to output your file in Handbrake using…

It’s been over 20 years since we shifted from film to digital photography, but the era of trying to make sure every shot counted is long forgotten. Now, we’ll routinely snap multiple shots of the same scene with the aim of going through them later to pick out the best one. But are you diligently doing this? If not, your hard drive is likely to be filling up with hundreds of redundant shots. This is where dupeGuru’s hardness filter comes in—by experimenting with reducing it by 5 or even 10 percent, you may be able to take the hassle out of identifying and removing all those imperfect photos to leave you with just the best-looking. Remember, though, that the lower the score, the more potential matches will be found, and the…

3 GREAT REASONS TO SHOP WITH US • From tech and gaming titles to fashion and celebrity magazines there’s something for everyone. • Immerse yourself in our specialist one-off publications about your favorite hobby or interest. • Exclusive Offer - Get 15% Off Guides and Specials - MDMAGlS VISIT OUR ONLINE STORE AT www.magazinesdirect.com ✓ Convenient home delivery ✓ Save on shop price ✓ Never miss an issue ✓ 1.4m subscriptions sold ORDER FORM COMPLETE ALL INFORMATION BELOW & RETURN WITH PAYMENT TO: MAXIMUM PC, PO BOX 2029, LANGHORNE, PA 19047-9957 *Offer is valid on US orders only, visit us at www.magazinesdirect.com or call 1-844-779-2822 for international pricing and other subscription options. Free gifts are fulfilled once payment is processed. T-shirt design may vary. 13 issues annually. Offer valid until June…

IT’S NO EXAGGERATION to say that the next generation of handheld gaming PCs has arrived in the form of the ROG Ally. It builds on what the Steam Deck achieved to make a really good portable PC gaming experience. That’s because the top-end ROG Ally, with its AMD Z1 Extreme chip, is priced at just $699. Performance is what sets it apart from Valve’s handheld, though. That AMD Z1 Extreme APU is a stunning piece of mobile silicon, with a CPU heart capable of outstripping modern Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7 processors. That, along with its surfeit of DDR5 memory and PCIe 4.0 SSD, makes it a supremely responsive system. The 12 CU RDNA 3 GPU is also impressive for an integrated GPU. Native 1080p gaming is possible…

TIP OF THE MONTH UTILIZING TASK MANAGER If your PC is feeling sluggish or you just want to monitor its live performance, then Task Manager should be your best friend. To launch quickly, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Inside the app, go to options, and select ‘Always on top’ to ensure it overlays any open application. This means that if your game crashes, you can open this up, and end the task from here. HANDHELD HEAVEN With the release of the ASUS ROG Ally, the popularity of the Nintendo Switch, and handhelds coming out of every nook and cranny, it’s no surprise that they’ve caught my interest. I come from console gaming beginnings, and have always enjoyed being able to take a slice of that kind of gaming experience on the go with…

There’s no need to spend hundreds of dollars on expensive IP cameras to populate your home surveillance system, but at the same time, you can’t simply purchase a cheap network camera on eBay and assume that it will automatically work with motionEye. The most crucial thing with any IP camera is that it’s RTSP or ONVIF-compliant. When searching for IP cameras, make sure they offer this before purchasing, but be aware that many cheap Chinese knock-offs advertise ONVIF/RTSP compatibility while not working out of the box. In many cases, you may need to track down a specific firmware version that unlocks ONVIF support. One camera that doesn’t require a firmware update is the V380 Pro series—visit https://gist.github.com/SolveSoul and click the ceshi. ini link for instructions on how to use a…

YOU’LL NEED THIS A BROKEN OR PROBLEMATIC USB THUMB DRIVE If it’s not working then it’s ideal. MOST OF US HAVE A PLETHORA OF USB STICKS lying around that most of the time either stay empty or are only brought out for infrequent tasks like reinstalling Windows. But what if you’ve got some important files on one, such as photos or documents, and no matter what you do, you can’t get it to work? Well, if you have a USB stick that’s bent or won’t connect, follow these instructions to fix it and recover your data. 1 DIAGNOSE THE DAMAGE First, thoroughly examine your USB stick. If the plug is misshapen, be very wary of connecting it to your computer: if it gets stuck, you could seriously damage your PC’s…

FORGET 49-INCH UBER-WIDE monsters, 1080p panels with the kind of refresh rate that gives you a nosebleed, massive OLED screens that are really thinly disguised TVs, or niche 8K irrelevancies. For the discerning PC enthusiast with cash to splash, there can currently only be one monitor choice. Yup, it’s a 32-inch 4K panel with a triple-digit refresh rate. That gives you plenty of on-screen real-estate, decent pixel density for nice, crisp fonts, and good image detail, plus sufficient fluidity and low enough latency that anything faster risks diminishing returns. It’s this enticing proposition that the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 serves up. At $749, none of this comes cheap. In fact, if anything the Legion feels pricey for what you’re getting. Notably, the HDR support is limited. Yes, there’s HDR 400 certification,…

WE’RE SWITCHING sides now from the productivity-based Dell 24” P2423D monitor (page 78) to a gaming model. If refresh rates, response times, connectivity, and features such as Nvidia G-Sync are more your thing, then this 27” G2723H should suit your needs. Despite the P2423D having a visually stunning display, the 5ms response time and 60Hz refresh rate aren’t going to help you much if you plan on jumping into a Call of Duty: Warzone lobby. Visually, you can distinguish the differences between the more gamer-focused displays Dell has to offer and the productivity-based ones. There is a lot more plastic here than we found on the Dell 24” P2423D, which featured a fancy brushed aluminum stand. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as you don’t want the display’s stand to…

EVEN THOUGH we'd be lost without headphones for work, music consumption, gaming, and relaxing, it’s great to have both a reliable pair of cans and a solid speaker solution. Say, for instance, you're relaxing before you go out for dinner, the last thing you want to be walking around with is headphone hair. We’ve all been there—it’s nearly impossible to remove that dent! So what better way to compensate than with a powerful pair of speakers? The Arena 9 from SteelSeries is the range-topping model and aims to be an all-in-one solution for at-home use. Can they deliver a fantastic soundstage, look the part, and fit easily within your setup at home? Sitting at the top of the SteelSeries hierarchy above the Arena 3 & 7, the 9’s offer the…

LET ME TELL YOU about the one that got away. She was pitiless and cruel, narcissistic and delusional. She unfurled through Citadel Station in a thousand security cameras and as many cyborg slaves, their meat taken from the bodies of the outpost’s former staff. She made pustules and blisters, mutants and monsters. She was the death of me a million times over, and I’ve missed her more than words can say. She is SHODAN, the malevolent AI goddess who was the centerpiece and proudest creation of 1994’s System Shock, rebuilt in sparkling Unreal Engine 4 in this remake from Nightdive Studios. Gone are the sprite-based enemies and screen-eating UI from the original game, replaced by clanking, three-dimensional automatons and an inventory that—while not exactly sleek—is certainly easier to use than…

WE KNEW AMD was going to go hybrid—it’s the obvious next step in processor development that Intel and Apple have already made. We now have confirmation from AMD’s Chief Technology Officer, Mark Papermaster. AMD has done well with its tactic of throwing as many cores at a processor as it can. The Zen core was good, but it was the Zen 2 with its 16 cores that lit a fire under Intel, which has since staged a comeback with its hybrid big.little designs of Alder Lake and Raptor Lake. The Phoenix 2 APU is expected to be the first application of a hybrid design, with two performance cores and four efficiency cores. Unlike Intel, AMD will use the Zen 4 architecture for both the efficiency and performance cores. The former,…

IN 2023, a VR headset needs to be immersive, comfortable, and offer support for a wide selection of games and apps. It should also offer good value for money, whether you’re spending hundreds or thousands of dollars. Luckily, there are many excellent VR headsets that fit that description today. We’ve rounded up all the popular models from Valve, Meta, HTC, and the rest, and tested them to death so you can decide which one is worth your hard-earned cash. 5 META QUEST PRO Although Meta’s top-end VR headset is expensive, it recently dropped from its launch price of $1,500 down to $999. The Meta Quest Pro is impressive, but its short battery life, the decision to have it focus on mixed reality, and underused features mean our number one pick…

COMPARED TO SOME very recent builds, this one went extremely smoothly. From start to finish, even on the software end, it was reasonably plain sailing. Luck wasn’t always on our side, but we managed to get this system built and set up quickly. We set out to achieve a machine that can be used both for work and pleasure, and we’ve most certainly done that here. Other elements, such as futureproofing and budgeting, were also thrown into the mix. Although components such as the cooling and PSU are expensive, these should last a long time, and are equipped to handle more powerful processors and graphic cards in future. It’s sometimes better to stretch your budget on components if you know you might want to swap things out later. We could…

IS YOUR PC starting to creak under the weight of all your folders and installed apps? Before reaching for the nuclear ‘clean reinstall’ button, there’s plenty you can do to spruce up your current installation. The obvious solution is to perform a cleanup of key files, and naturally that’s where we’ll start with this feature. But we’ll also show you how you can optimize Windows itself to reduce the strain and free up much-needed system resources to give your PC a welcome shot in the arm. Throughout the course of this feature, we’ll examine both Windows’ own tools and the best third-party apps that money—well—can’t buy. You see, we’ve gone the extra mile to track down only free system-cleaning and optimization tools. Not only will we show you how to tame your…

Forgive us if we sound like a broken record, but we’re big fans of portable apps at Maximum PC. Not only can portable apps be transported from PC to PC, they’re a great way to stop your system getting cluttered—and they survive reinstalls intact. While portable apps are designed to be run on portable medium such as a flash drive, you can easily store them on any hard drive—including a dedicated folder on your system drive. You could even store it inside your cloud storage, so it’s backed up as well as portable. You can manually create shortcuts to portable apps for storing on the desktop or taskbar, but we recommend downloading and installing the PortableApps Platform (https://portableapps.com/), which provides you with a launcher, as well as access to over 100 apps…

THREATS TO OUR ONLINE PRIVACY are constantly evolving. Advertising companies are finding new ways to track us, websites are developing new methods of collecting our data, and even the operating systems we use every day like Windows 11 are now trying to sell us something as we just go about our work and tasks. This makes it more difficult than ever to preserve your anonymity as you browse the web, and essential to ensure you’re using reliable methods to combat the latest threats. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of privacy tools, and names such as Brave, DuckDuckGo, and NordVPN will be familiar to most readers. But in the past year, lots of new options have emerged that potentially offer better protection than the software and services you currently use, while existing tools…

Many modern printers are designed to serve a whole network, but if your printer only has a USB connection, there are ways to share it across multiple computers. If your router has a USB port, it may have a print server. If that feature isn’t available, you can share a printer from within Windows or macOS. The catch is that the printer will only be available when the computer is powered on and online. You might therefore consider setting up a Raspberry Pi as a dedicated print server: this is a little more complicated than clicking a few buttons, but you’ll find full instructions here: (www.tomshardware.com/how-to/raspberry-pi-print-server).…

YOU’LL NEED THIS LINUX OR WINDOWS PC RUNNING DOCKER motionEye Docker container, at least one compatible camera (USB attached or ONVIF/RTSP-streaming IP camera). SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS PLAY A KEY ROLE in your home’s security, but many home security webcams are tied to proprietary services, with expensive cloud storage plans and question marks over the security of where that footage is stored and who can see it. Thankfully, there’s a free open-source solution that puts you firmly in control of all your cameras and allows you to store your footage safely at home. The tool in question is motionEye, and it works with a wide range of cameras, from USB-attached webcams to a broad selection of network cameras that support either ONVIF or RTSP streaming protocols. In this tutorial, we’ll show you…

Following our advice in the April 2023 issue, a great use for old, obsolete phones is as an IP web camera. You’ll need a specialist app to create the necessary stream that will work with motionEye—we recommend Pavel Khlebovich’s IP Webcam (free) for Android, and ipCam ($2.99, https://skjm.com/ipcam/) for iPad and iPhone. Configuration is relatively simple. Simply enable ONVIF support in IP Webcam and then start the server—the URL you’ll need when connecting your phone as a Network Camera is rtsp://192.168.x.y:8080/h264_ulaw.sdp—we recommend taking the time to add username and password protection to the feed in the app’s settings. With ipCam, the URL you need when setting up the camera as a Network Camera is http://192.168.x.y/video.mjpg—again, use the app’s options to configure password protection for additional security. Once configured, all you…

1. FOLDER LIST A summary of the folders you’ve set up for sharing is shown here, including file-syncing progress. Click one to expand it and reveal more details about it. 2. VIEW FILE TRANSFERS Click ‘Xxxxx items, ~Xx GiB’ item to bring up a progress window for that shared folder. This will show which files are transferring, as well as those that have been transferred, and those waiting to be copied across. 3. ACTIONS MENU Click here to access Syncthing’s universal settings. You can also view your device ID, shut down or restart the underlying Syncthing process, view the logs, and access an advanced menu offering yet more options. 4. DEVICE PROPERTIES Get an overview of your device’s current state, including how much data has been uploaded and downloaded since…

There are plenty of data-recovery tools, but as there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to recover any data, it makes sense to start with Stellar Data Recovery (stellarinfo.com). It will scan your device and recover up to 1GB at no cost. If more than 1GB can be recovered, you can upgrade to the Standard edition at $60 a year. Here are our Workshop instructions… 1. Launch the program and, on the first page, untick any file types that you don’t want to search for. If you only want to recover lost images, for example, untick everything other than Photos. Click Next. 2. Click the drive letter assigned to your corrupted USB stick. Note that you can also use Stellar Data Recovery to scan a hard drive—either internal or external—if that’s…

PROJECTORS aren’t great as multi-purpose displays. You’re not going to share a projector across tasks like web browsing, editing a spreadsheet, or gaming. Heck, they aren’t even suitable for all types of gaming. You’re hardly going to play Counter-Strike on a projector. But boy, does it deliver in the right circumstances. Enter the new Viewsonic X2-4K. It’s a lower mid-tier beamer with a particular gaming remit. Priced around $1,700, it’s neither a cheap option nor a premium model. It’s a little like an entry-level 144Hz 4K gaming monitor. It’s got some high-end features, but omits others. Speaking of 4K, that’s exactly what you get here. The point of a projector is having a huge image that fills your field of view, so you want as many pixels as you can…

WHEN SELECTING a monitor, there are many different features to choose between. These include resolution, screen size, refresh rate, response time, color range, panel type, brightness, contrast, connectivity, and more. It’s important to know what features you need—for instance, a gamer would probably prefer a high refresh rate and response, while a designer or creative would be more worried about color actuary, panel type, and connectivity. The QHD Dell P2423D appeals to the latter, favoring productivity over gaming. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, this is a handsome display. It doesn’t take long to realize that this is a premium-end product for the creative market—there’s no crazy RGB madness going on here! The stand feels sturdy, and is finished in brushed aluminum. It has a swivel angle of 90 degrees,…

FOR MOST OF 2022, we recommended the Core i5 12600K for the best gaming CPU, and the Core i5 12400 as the best gaming CPU on a budget. Last year, the Core i5 13600K took over the top spot. Today, the Core i5 13400F pushes Alder Lake out of the runnings with an even more impressive specification for the money. The Intel Core i5 13400F is a processor I’ve been waiting patiently to test since I first heard wind of it last year. You’ll understand why once you read these specs: A 10-core processor made up of six Performance-cores (P-cores) and four Efficient-cores (E-cores), the Core i5 13400F has a total of 16 threads. Its fastest cores will run up to 4.6GHz out of the box—a clock speed that wouldn’t…