be quiet! Dark Rock TF Review
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Video Capture & Edit Guide
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Hardware Roundup: Friday, March 4, 2016, Edition
The end of the week is here, with a few items to help you welcome in the weekend. There is a review on the Lexar JumpDrive M20c USB 3.1 Type-C Flash Drive, which offers quick speeds and the reversible design to fit however you place it. A new case mod takes the In Win D-Frame Mini, packs in a whole host of water cooling, uses the frame as the reservoir, and is just something to see. Ending things for today is a new podcast covering the latest news and reviews from the past week.
Storage/Hard Drives
Lexar JumpDrive M20c USB 3.1 Type-C Flash Drive @ Madshrimps
Miscellany
Case Mod Friday: L3peau @ ThinkComputers
Podcast #389 @ PC Perspective
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F3 Wi-Fi Router Released by Tenda
Tenda Technology, a subsidiary of Shenzhen Tenda, has officially announced a slim and low-profile 300Mbps Wi-Fi router known as the F3. The latest product offering from Tenda comes with a high-end Broadcom networking chip as well as three external high-gain omni-directional antennas, which combined allow users to experience excellent Wi-Fi range and speed. The Tenda F3, which is able to utilize IP-based control settings to effectively manage bandwidth, also makes use of an excellent user interface that is usable for both novices as well as tech-savvy individuals.
The Tenda F3 boasts a quick 30 second setup time and is able to be purchased from Amazon for just $24.99.
Source: Press Release
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Intel Working on Augmented-Reality Headset
Intel is working on an augmented-reality headset powered by its RealSense technology. Intel is planning the headset as a "reference design for other manufacturers, rather than an end product in itself." RealSense provides depth-sensing capabilities and high resolution image capture, providing a possible competitor to Google Glass and the Microsoft HoloLens. Augmented-reality is different from virtual reality, working by "superimposing virtual elements onto the real world."
Source: Fortune
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Steam Making Changes to Game Bundles
Game bundles have been a highlight of Steam sales for as long as I can remember, but they have been plagued by one potential negative. When purchasing a bundle, if you owned one or more of the games already in the bundle you wouldn't receive an extra key for that game. Valve has decided to switch things up and going forward bundles will be discounted if you own some of the games in the bundle. Valve described the move to developers stating, "With Steam Bundles, if a customer already [owns] some items in the Bundle, they will pay for and receive only the items not already in their account. This allows the best fans of your series or franchise to 'complete the set' and get a deal on the remaining items in the Bundle." The decision has not been confirmed by Valve yet, but the article noted that some bundles are "already available on some bundles in the wild." Hopefully it will be rolled out to all bundles in time for the next big sale.
Source: PCGames N
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Post-Release Plans for The Division Revealed
Tom Clancy's The Division releases next week and like many games, it will continue to receive new content, and now more details of its Year One plan have been revealed. In April it will receive its first free update which will introduce the game's first incursion, an end-game activity designed for squad play that will grant high level weapons and equipment. If you want what you friend got though, do not worry because this update also adds the loot trading system. In May the second free update will be released with new Dark Zone features and a new incursion set in Columbus Circle.
In June we will see the first of the three paid expansions release, which had some details revealed in January. The first expansion is Underground and will let the players explore New York City's underworld. Survival will be available this summer and will challenge players to survive in a hostile environment while gathering essential supplies. The third expansion, Last Stand will release next winter and will have players and their squads fighting a "relentless foe."
Source: Press Release and UbiBlog
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Dead Island Definitive Collection is Coming For You
Techland has been busy lately. Earlier this week its game Dying Light had NVIDIA PCSS technology patched in, and now the Dead Island Definitive Collection has been announced. The collection includes both Dead Island (released 2011) and its stand-alone expansion, Dead Island: Riptide (released 2013) with all of the previously released DLC and will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. The new mini game, Dead Island Retro Revenge is also included. It features a retro look to its melee-based combat, power-ups, super attacks, a combo system, leaderboards, and achievements.
To bring the titles to the current crop of consoles, both Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide have been rebuilt on Techland's next gen Chrome engine and will feature several improvements. The game textures have been redone at a higher resolution, models and geometry assets have had their quality increased, the lighting system has been improved to be more photorealistic, and Chrome engine's physically based shading technique is being employed to make the models and objects look better in various lighting conditions. A more sophisticated anti-aliasing system has also been added, for the benefit of console players, and HBAO and motion blur effects have been added. The UI has also been updated to provide a more consistent look between the two games and a fan favorite unofficial PC mod is being added to both titles, so you can punch your way through the games.
The Dead Island Definitive Collection is set to release on May 31 for $39.99. If you only want one title, Dead Island Definitive Edition and Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition will be available separately for the Xbox One and PS4 at $19.99 each, on the same day. Dead Island Retro Revenge is only included with the collection.
Source: Deep Silver
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Mass Effect: Andromeda Delayed to Early Next Year
The next entry in the Mass Effect series takes us to the Andromeda galaxy, but it now looks like we might be waiting a little longer to get there. Speaking during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, EA's CFO, Blake Jorgensen, mentioned Mass Effect: Andromeda will launch during the company's fiscal fourth quarter, which ends March 31, 2017. So this means Mass Effect: Andromeda will miss its original holiday 2016 launch date and won't be here until sometime between January and the end of March, 2017. It's not a huge delay, but if it means a bit more time to refine the RPG, all the better. You can read Jorgensen's full quote below, which gives an idea on some other titles EA has planned.
We've got a great year ahead... we've got our Battlefield first-person shooter game coming in the third quarter, and our third-party title that Respawn, our partner, built, it's called TItanfall, it's the second title that they brought into that brand. Both of those are first-person shooters and will be targeted around the fast, action-driven shooter market, as well as the strategy-driven market in that quarter... We have our Mirror's Edge runner game this first quarter, and then we have Mass Effect, which is a sci-fi action game, in our fourth quarter. So big year ahead and we're pretty excited.That provides us an insight on EA's launch plans this fiscal year, with Battlefield 5 and Titanfall 2 slated to hit by the end of 2016. Mirror's Edge: Catalyst is scheduled to launch at the end of May, with Mass Effect: Andromeda bringing up the rear early next year. It's a little something for everyone, even if we're waiting a little longer to explore the Andromeda galaxy. Mass Effect: Andromeda will arrive on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
To help tide you over a little, some renderings of the "Pathfinder" character from Mass Effect: Andromeda were shared on an online 3D modeling community late last year, but only recently discovered. The renderings are made in ZBrush and show off just the male character model (female is an option in-game, too), but if this is our new protagonist in Mass Effect: Andromeda, as seen in the trailer, we're decked out in some sweet armor.
Sources: NeoGAF and VG247
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Hardware Roundup: Thursday, March 3, 2016, Edition
March is starting to pick up steam, with several items coming along with it. There is a look at the refreshed AMD FM2+ lineup on both the APU and CPU side to see just what's been done to it. To keep things cool, both the Reeven Okeanos and Brontes CPU coolers get reviewed, offering a large dual-tower cooler and a smaller C-type cooler to fit whatever type of build you have. We have a review on the OCZ Trion 150 480GB SSD, which can be won in our contest, to show off what kind of speed it can bring to your system. Ending things for today is the MSI GS40 Phantom 6QE Gaming Laptop, featuring a 14" display, Intel Core i7-6700HQ, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M.
CPUs
AMD Refreshes FM2+ Lineup for APU and CPU @ PC Perspective
CPU Cooling
Reeven Okeanos and Brontes @ PC Perspective
Storage/Hard Drives
OCZ Trion 150 480GB SSD @ Benchmark Reviews
Laptops/Tablets
MSI GS40 Phantom 6QE Gaming Laptop @ TechSpot
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Lian-Li Holding Keyboard and Mouse Giveaway
In celebration of the launch of its first keyboard and mouse bundle, the TerminAl, Lian-Li is holding a giveaway on Facebook. To enter, simply navigate to the Lian-Li Facebook page and cast your vote for favorite color of TerminAl. The contest runs until March 25 and one of each color bundle will be given away every seven days. The bundle is available in green, red, blue, gold, silver, and black and is constructed from brushed aluminum.
Source: Press Release
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No Early Access for Reviewers of The Division
Next week the highly anticipated The Division will be launching with its seamless online experience, allowing players to go it alone or to group up for missions and the Dark Zone. This flexibility has been part of the game's design since the beginning, and because of how much it can affect the gameplay experience, Ubisoft is not giving reviewers early access to the game. At 00:01 AM Australian Eastern Daylight Time on March 8, the servers will be turned on and everyone will get their first crack at the game, outside of the betas.
Source: UbiBlog
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New Laser Created That Covers Challenging Frequencies
Our eyes allow us to see a wealth of colors, but the frequencies they represent span a very small section of the spectrum. Wavelengths outside the visible range can have many, powerful uses, but can also be challenging to produce. On example of this is the mid-infrared area of 3.1 and 3.2 microns, which lasers have struggled to work with before, but now researchers, as reported by The Optical Society, have created a new kind of laser that is able to emit in that range.
There are many different kinds of lasers out there, such as gas and fiber lasers. Gas lasers tend to be bulky and inflexible, which limits their applications, while fiber lasers are actually made in small, flexible optical fibers. The problem with fiber lasers for mid-IR wavelengths though is that the silica the fibers are made from absorbs emissions past 2.8 microns. Quantum cascade lasers, which are also able to produce mid-IR, do not really work until you reach 3.5 microns, leaving a gap. The new laser the researchers created is a hybrid of both gas and fiber lasers, but differs quite significantly from fiber lasers because they are hollow-core fibers. Traditional optical fibers have a solid core that the light travels along. With these hollow-core fibers, the light will actually travel through an open space with bubble-like structures surrounding the region. When the light strikes these structures, it will reflect back, remaining trapped in the fiber. This prevents the silica from absorbing the light, which is produced by exciting acetylene gas. This gas is already known to emit in the mid-IR, when stimulated by external sources, such as more traditional lasers.
Lasers operating in the 3.1 to 3.2 micron range could be used in spectroscopy, environmental sensing, and explosive detection, but this discovery has more uses than that. This new type of laser could be used with other gases, expanding the range of frequencies that can be emitted, and potentially allowing for new interactions between lasers and gases.
Source: The Optical Society
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AMD Provides Crossfire Profile for Far Cry Primal in Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2.1
AMD seems to be on a roll lately with its beta driver releases, as the company has just pushed out Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2.1 hotfix to gamers. The updated driver comes just days after AMD released version 16.2 of its Radeon Software Crimson Edition driver, which provided gamers with various performance improvements and bug fixes. Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2.1 hotfix is a much smaller update for the company, as it focuses on delivering a Crossfire profile for Far Cry Primal, which was just release by Ubisoft yesterday.
Source: AMD
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