Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2019 i PCWorld

The PC’s been enjoying a resurgence over the last few years, and judging by what we witnessed at CES, the pedal will remain planted firmly to the metal in 2019. AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all hosted blockbuster keynotes brimming with big announcements. Monitors evolved beyond being simple 27-inch rectangles. Gaming laptops embraced innovation in wildly different ways. And there’s a lot of gear coming that’s just plain badass. These are the big CES hardware reveals and trends that PC enthusiasts need to know about. Buckle up, and be sure to hit those links if you want deeper details about any of these topics. 1. NVIDIA Nvidia kicked CES off with a bang in its Sunday night keynote. Unsurprisingly, the company continued its real-time ray tracing push, bringing the technology to…

RGB lighting on gaming PCs is about to get a whole lot brighter and a whole lot more efficient thanks to Corsair’s new Capellix LED technology, which promises to be 60 percent brighter while using 40 percent less power. The new LEDs are incredibly tiny and dense compared to typical SMD, or surface mount device, LEDs. That density could one day lead to RGB grids on a case door or front panel with far more granularity than today’s LEDs.   Corsair didn’t create the LED technology but it did work with a manufacturer to take LED technology that normally would never be applied to a PC and had it adapted to computer applications. The LEDs are so efficient, Corsair said it will be able to use them in wireless keyboards…

When Intel tipped a half-dozen new desktop processors during its CES keynote, the company kept quiet about specifics. Now we know: The new chips end with an “F” suffix—and they lack an integrated GPU. So you probably should skip them. Why? Because right now, they’re priced identically to chips that do include the integrated GPU. No, it doesn’t mean that Intel’s new F-series processors are worthless, especially if you already own a PC with a discrete GPU. It does mean, however, that the discrete GPU will be powered on for every task, possibly consuming more power than your PC normally would. Tom’s Hardware, which noted the new pricing, called the processors a manufacturing “relief valve” to help alleviate the shortage of its other 14nm chips, and that’s probably an accurate…

Time has caught up to Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 2. We loved it in its first iteration—what Microsoft now calls the Surface Laptop (1st Gen), and the low-cost clamshell remains a superb, optimized laptop for students and workers on the go. But while the Surface Laptop 2 has basically stood still, the competition has chimed in with their own progressive offerings. As our review shows, the 13-inch Surface Laptop 2 is still a solid laptop, but design choices made a year ago look a bit tired now. The Surface Laptop is nearly identical to its predecessor in all three dimensions, the rated battery life, and even weight. In addition to the color, Microsoft has moved from a 7th-gen to an 8th-gen Core microprocessor, and the company has thankfully eliminated the 4GB…

SteelSeries has long had a weak spot in its peripherals lineup: mice. Great headsets, good keyboards, mediocre mice. Some were too conservative, others too daring, but none of the ones we’ve looked at over the years have qualified as must-haves. That changes with the new Rival 650 ($120 on Amazon). At long last, SteelSeries has a mouse that both nails the fundamentals and packs a solid gimmick. WEIGHTED AVERAGE Let’s start with the design, because SteelSeries has improved by leaps and bounds in that regard. SteelSeries headsets have always featured forward-thinking aesthetics, but its mice have looked more like something you’d find in an office. Lots of grayish planes, function-over-form materials, and so on. The Rival 650 is recognizable—which, given the limited elements in a mouse, is about the highest…

“THE MOST POWERFUL CONSOLE EVER BUILT.” No, I’m not talking about Microsoft’s Xbox One X. That’s old news at this point. We’re looking to the future now, to the so-called Mad Box, a new console announced by Project CARS developer Slightly Mad Studios this week. CEO Ian Bell promises the Mad Box will run games at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, with full support for the major virtual reality headsets—thus the “most powerful console” comment. And he promises it will ship in three-ish years, for a price comparable to other next-gen consoles—which raises the question, what will those next-gen consoles look like? What does the Mad Box tell us, if anything, about the PlayStation 5 and whatever Microsoft’s next Xbox is named? What features will be important? And,…

Google Assistant is everywhere, ranging from the Android smartphone in your pocket to the smart speakers and smart displays ensconced in your kitchen or living room. And that means you can control all your smart home devices without so much as turning your head. All you need to say is “Hey Google!” What do you say after that? Well, almost anything, but here are 15 essential commands you should commit to memory. 1. GET A WEATHER REPORT One of the simplest commands is probably also one of the most useful. As you’re getting ready to head out the door, say “Hey, Google. What’s the weather like?” You’ll get a succinct explanation of the current conditions and the forecasted conditions for later in the day. 2. READ THE NEWS Want to…

It’s the start of a new era. Nvidia fulfilled its CES promises by releasing GeForce driver 417.71, which lets GeForce graphics cards tap into the Adaptive Sync capabilities of AMD FreeSync monitors for buttery-smooth, tearing-free gaming. Previously, GeForce GPUs could only synchronize their refresh rates with Nvidia’s own G-Sync displays, which tend to cost much more than FreeSync displays. You can snag the driver in the GeForce Experience app or on the GeForce website. It’s not quite plug-and-play, though—at least in most cases. The driver will automatically enable variable refresh rates on FreeSync displays that meet Nvidia’s strict “G-Sync Compatible” requirements. Yours probably doesn’t though; of the 400 Adaptive Sync monitors that Nvidia says it’s tested, only 12—yes, 12—earned the certification. But fear not. If your FreeSync display didn’t make the cut,…

When Dell made the Alienware Area-51m, it broke one mold and created another. Announced at CES, this gaming laptop is the first to debut a new overall design for Dell’s Alienware gaming line. It also offers no compromises, with desktop-grade hardware and a laundry list of options and upgradable parts. It’s a tantalizing balance of power and refinement. Several customizable SKUs of the Area-51m are available. Prices start around $2,549. We took a detailed look at the Area-51m at a pre-briefing. Check out the video for the deep dive. Below, we’ll highlight some of the innovations and specs. THE BEST FEATURES OF THE ALIENWARE AREA-51M We’ll talk about the design first, because you’ll start to see it on future Alienware products as the year progresses. Dell wanted to get away from…

A few months back we went to look at HTC’s new Vive Focus, a clunky standalone headset that stumbled through all the demos we tried. It didn’t impress us much, to say the least—and that was a shame, because HTC needs something to counter Oculus’s upcoming standalone Quest headset. Much as we love PCs here at PCWorld, the Quest’s slick wireless VR is impressive enough that we’ve already hypothesized it “could be the VR headset moving forward.” Luckily HTC gets a second try. At CES, HTC hosted a small press conference that revealed multiple new pieces of hardware: The Vive Cosmos and Vive Pro Eye. Details on both were skimpy, but perhaps HTC’s finally landed upon a proper Oculus Quest competitor. VIVE COSMOS Let’s cover the more interesting announcement first, yeah?…

Professional-level PDF editors have a reputation for being feature-rich but complicated to use. Wondershare’s PDFelement 6 Pro bucks that trend, somehow managing to be a delight to use without sacrificing essential productivity capabilities. The editor seemingly spares not a single business-ready feature. It converts PDFs to Excel, Word, EPUB, PPT, Pages, HTML, RTF, and text formats, and creates them from images, HTML, and text file formats. PDF element also supports annotations, text editing, form creation, data extraction, password-encryption, and permissions-based restrictions. But it’s most laudable feature is its uncluttered, easily navigable interface. Similar to what we saw in iSkysoft’s PDF Editor 6, PDFelement’s home screen displays its basic capabilities—edit, create, combine, convert, and more—on large clickable tiles so you don’t have to hunt through nested menus to find what you…

Grapeshot Games, a sister studio of the makers of Ark: Survival Evolved, calls its new pirate-themed survival MMO Atlas, a word that sizzles with the promise of high adventure and discovery. And it’s true, there is a bit of that. But the more I played the newly launched Early Access release over the holiday break, the more I felt it’d be better called Odyssey. That word also evokes escapades and exploration, but more to the point, it suggests an aimless voyage where greater powers pelt you with hours of misery and misfortune. Much like Homer’s Odyssey, Atlas ($30 on Steam) is an ordeal that breeds good stories, but they’re stories that are better told than experienced. So tell us, O muse, how I and my friends Joseph Bradford and Joseph…

One of the most powerful features of Amazon’s Echo smart speakers is called Routines. Instead of just letting you do one thing at a time, Routines can tie multiple actions to a single voice command. They can even automate tasks without needing you to speak at all. Still, setting up Alexa Routines—and getting the most out of them—takes a bit of work and creativity. Here’s everything you need to know about making your own: ALEXA ROUTINE BASICS To begin creating Routines, open the Alexa app for Android or iOS, tap the menu button in the top-left corner, and select Routines. To add a new Routine, hit the + button in the top-right corner. All Routines consist of one triggering condition (such as a voice command) and one or more corresponding actions.…

Even if you’re leery about rooting your Android phone and installing a custom ROM, you can still try out some features and settings that aren’t turned on by default. Every Android phone comes equipped with the ability to enable Developer options, which lets you test some features and access parts of the phone that are usually locked away. As you might expect, Developer options are hidden away by default, but it’s easy to enable if you know where to look. FIND YOUR ANDROID BUILD NUMBER Before you can enable Developer options on your Android phone or tablet, you’ll first need to find your phone’s build number. On most phones, you type build number into the search field, but here’s how to find it on a few popular devices: Google Pixel:…

Haptic feedback is the one feature I miss when gaming on PC. I love me a mouse and keyboard, but I find myself reaching for my Xbox One controller sometimes just for the rumble effects. It’s not a very sophisticated version of haptic feedback, but it nevertheless adds so much to the weightiness of guns, the rumble of engines, the boom of an explosion—all these small touches you don’t notice until they’re gone. Nobody’s managed to make haptics work on PC though. Or, at least, nobody’s stuck with it long enough to force adoption. Razer loves a good gimmick though, and in keeping with that spirit Razer might be the company to deliver us from our rumble-less prison. Well, Razer and a gaggle of partners, including Lofelt and Subpac. SHAKING…

Maybe PC audio is still important after all. At CES 2019, EVGA introduced Nu Audio, its first-ever sound card with claims that it will bring “lifelike gaming” to your ears. EVGA partnered with UK firm AudioNote on the card, which features a six-layer, gold-plated PCB. Making clean audio depends a lot on getting noise-free power, so EVGA uses AudioNote capacitors and resistors in the card as well as a Texas Instruments power-regulation circuit. There’s also German-made WIMA capacitors and AKM 4493 DACS and AKM 5572 ADCs. The card also embeds an XMOS xCORE-200 processor for most of the audio chores on the card. The card can drive large 600 Ohm cans and also supports up to 384KHz, 32-bit audio files.   For ports, you get RCA, quarter-inch, and two 3.5mm…

After debuting in luxury-priced enthusiast graphics cards exclusively, Nvidia’s real-time ray tracing is finally coming to the masses with the GeForce RTX 2060—although this $350 graphics card, as powerful as it is, skirts the upper limits of what could be considered mainstream. Yes, the GeForce RTX 2060 maintains the inflated pricing of other RTX options, which effectively bumps the cost of each performance tier up a notch. The $700 RTX 2080 costs as much as last generation’s GTX 1080 Ti; the $500 RTX 2070 mirrors the price of the GTX 1080; and while the last-gen GTX 1060 cost $260, this new RTX 2060 moves into the GTX 1070’s previous territory with a $90 price hike. But while the RTX 2070 and 2080 largely delivered performance in line with their similarly priced…

Uber-fast NVMe storage for 20 cents per gigabyte? That’s what Adata’s XPG SX8200 Pro delivers. Of course, NAND prices have dropped recently, but until now that’s only been reflected in performance-challenged (on long writes) budget drives. The SX8200 Pro is an NVMe drive that rivals top-rated Samsung’s 970 Pro in performance but is significantly cheaper. DESIGN AND SPECS The Adata SX8200 Pro is a 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) form factor M.2 drive using 3D (layered) TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND marshaled by a Silicon Motion SM-2262EN controller. It’s a full four-lane PCIe 3.0 implementation, not two lanes like many other bargain-priced NVMe SSDs such as Kingston’s A1000. There’s a DRAM cache on board (an unspecified amount, likely 512MB), secondary cache to the tune of approximately 1.2 percent of capacity, and…

A little less than eight years ago Intel helped usher in the era of thin-and-light notebook PCs, then called ultrabooks. Now, Intel and a number of its partners are ready to take the ultrabook to the next level with “Project Athena,” in a multi-year roadmap they unveiled at CES. Intel executives say they have the support of partners including Acer, Asus, Dell, Google, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sharp. Yes, Google. You’ll eventually see “Athena”-specced Chromebooks, too. What Project Athena notebooks will eventually be branded as hasn’t been formally decided yet, but the timetable has; the first Project Athena laptops will ship in the second half of 2019. Unfortunately, they were not at CES. Ultrabooks debuted in 2011, arguably as a response to the incredibly slim MacBook Air that…

What makes your house your home? Is it the furniture? The art? A few favorite collectibles arranged on the shelves? Your PC doesn’t have to be any different. If you’re new to Windows 10, we’ll show you how to personalize your PC to make it feel, well, yours. From the moment you first power on your PC, you’ll be asked to choose how to manage your privacy and security. But once you complete that short process, the fun begins: you’ll be able to select backgrounds, configure your Start menu, and select apps and shortcuts. Think of this story as a complement to our previous tutorial on how to set up your new PC efficiently and effectively. This is the fun stuff. THE WINDOWS 10 OOBE Any time you buy a…