Maximum PC - Features

15 Technology Failures

Mark Pilkington — Mon, 20 May 2013 22:40:03 +0000

Duke Nukem Forever, Windows ME, Google Wave, and more!

Predicting the next big thing is never easy, especially when it comes to technology. It's easy to lose count of the number of times Microsoft or Google have promised to create products that will revolutionize our lives. Granted, occasionally the corporate gurus are right – smartphones and wireless networks being two great examples. But for all the successful launches, there are as many products that don’t quite get it right. It could be a fantastic idea on paper, but when it comes to fulfilling the dream, they become nothing more than technology failures.

Following on from our earlier article way back in 2010 covering the 13 Biggest Tech Blunders of the Decade we bring you 15 more embarrassing tech failures that some companies would rather you forget.

Did you own or ever use any of these tech blunders? If so, let us know in the comments below!

Google I/O 2013: Everything You Need to Know

Paul Lilly — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:57:46 +0000

Google music streaming service, Gmail improvements, and Galaxy S4 to come with stock Android Jelly Bean 4.2

If you weren't one of the 6 million people who tuned in to YouTube to watch the Google I/O 2013 keynote on Wednesday, don't sweat it, you've come to the right place for an extensive recap of all the big announcements. Some of it you may have already read about here on Maximum PC, such as Google partnering with Samsung to offer a totally clean version of the Galaxy S4 complete with an unlocked bootloader or the introduction of an All Access music service, but we also have some new stuff to share.

Technically the event is still going on -- it's a three-day event -- and while the news keeps pouring in, a lot of what's now being revealed are product statistics and minor software updates, like Heat Maps and Symbols being added to the Google Maps API -- not exactly 'knock-your-socks-off' news. There's plenty of interesting tidbits to share, however, so let's get started!

Android's Ascension

From humble beginnings as an operating system that was originally developed for digital cameras, Android over the past decade has grown into the most popular mobile OS in the world. Just how popular is the open source platform? Google revealed rather early in its opening keynote that Android is now installed on 900 million devices.

"There are over 7 billion people on this planet, so we have a long way to go and we think the journey is just getting started," Google's Sundar Pichai quipped on stage.

What's interesting about Android's dominance in mobile is that it's only scratched the surface of available users. While Pichai may have been semi-joking about getting Android devices into the hands of 7 billion people, Android's penetration in most territories around the world is less than 10 percent, albeit "growing very, very fast."

Underscoring Android's popularity is the number of app downloads to date, which Google pegs at 48 billion. To put that number into perspective, consider that it's just 2 billion shy of Apple, which recently announced 50 billion iOS app downloads.

In just the last month alone, Android users have installed 2.5 billion apps. Beyond bragging rights, all these numbers translate into revenue for developers, who have been paid more money in the last four months than in all of last year. The revenue per user is up 2.5x what it was a year ago. Not too shabby.

Google announced a bunch of new APIs for Android developers as part of a robust update to its Google Play services, including three new Android location-based tools. They are:

A low-power location mode that uses less than 1 percent of battery life per hour.
Geofenching: Lets you define virtual fences around geographic areas, which are triggered when a user enters or exits any of them. Developers can have 100 simultaneous geofences active per app.
Activity Recognition: Uses accelerometer data to determine whether a user is walking, cycling, or riding without tapping into the battery-sucking GPS.

Another new API is one that allows for cross-platform single sign-ons with Google+. The benefit for users is that they don't have to sign into apps separately on different devices, so if you open an app using your Google+ account, you're logged in whether you fire it up on the web, on your smartphone, or with your Android tablet.

Leveling Up Google Play

You'll notice some changes to Google Play over the course of the next few weeks. Google's putting a much bigger focus on movie, music, and book recommendations based on the content you consume and what items prompt your friends to mash the +1 button.

Google Play will also do a better job adapting to whichever device you're using. The same content will be available whether you're viewing Google Play on your notebook's browser or your tablet, but it will be presented differently on each to take advantage of the different form factors.

Google Gets Into Streaming Music

Okay, enough with the APIs, backend infrastructure, and UI enhancements, let's get to the fun stuff. One of the big announcements Google made was its new All Access streaming music service. This is the next logical step in the evolution of Google's foray into music, which began with it offering an online locker for users to upload 20,000 songs of their own that could then be streamed to multiple devices. After that, Google launched a music store, and now this.

For a monthly fee (normally $9.99, though if you sign up by June 30, it's $7.99), you can tap into Google's catalog of millions of songs, but it's more than just that. There are curated playlists by Google's expert music editors and 22 top level genres to sift through, with more to drill into. Best of all, you can immediately start playing anything you see in All Access, as nothing is grayed out.

There's quite a bit of fine grain control, too. Anything you listen to can be turned into a radio station. If you're curious about what the unseen DJ has picked out, you can take a look at the playlist and swipe away any songs you don't want to hear, You can also rearrange the order of songs in your queue.

All Access offers the same features across multiple devices. It's available now with a 30-day free trial.

Samsung Galaxy S4 as You've Always Wanted It (Unlocked)

The other big reveal is the one we talked about at the beginning. Coming soon to Google Play is a special version of Samsung's Galaxy S4 device. Unlike the one that's currently available, this one will ship with an unlocked bootloader. it will also feature a squeaky clean version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, delivering the same software experience that Google ships on its Nexus devices.

Like the Nexus line, this version of the Galaxy S4 will receive Android upgrades "promptly" with every system platform update, which means no more waiting around for weeks and months for your device maker and wireless carrier to get on the ball with the latest version of Android. Speaking of which, it will work on both AT&T and T-Mobile.

That's the good news. And the bad? Well, it's going to cost a whopping $649 when it becomes available starting June 26.

Chrome Dominates the Web

As far as Google is concerned, the various versions of Chrome collectively add up to the most used browser on the planet. It's added 300 million active users in the past 12 months, giving it a userbase that's now over 750 million strong, and climbing. Many of those new users are accessing Chrome on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

If those numbers are even remotely accurate, it's easy to see why Google is sticking with its Chromebook platform, which runs the company's Chrome OS. Providing further incentive to push Chromebooks onto the masses is data from Amazon that shows the $249 Samsung Chromebook as being the No. 1 selling laptop for 199 consecutive days.

"It's an ecosystem play and we have many more partners joining our journey," Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pinchai added.

Click the next page to see why you might want to start using Google+

Redesigning Google+

Get ready for a different Google+ experience than the one you're currently used to, assuming you're using the service. To take advantage of widescreen displays and to address the flatness of feeds, Google+ will be switching to a multi-column card design. This will make your feed more visually appealing, and on the backend, Google+ will optionally have the ability to automatically add hashtags. What for? If you spy the Eiffel Tower above, you'll notice there's no mention of what it is. However, Google knows, and if you click the card, it will present related information. Here's a short demo:

Related to Google+, Google introduced Google+ Hangouts for mobile devices during its event. It's a standalone app with a heavy focus on conversations, and it's available on Android, Chrome, Gmail, and iOS. It will keep a history of long-running conversations, though you can turn off the history and/or delete entries you're rather keep private.

Like everything else, there's an emphasis on making Hangouts visually appealing. There might be pictures and videos scattered throughout your long-running conversation, and according to Google, it just "feels alive." Subtle animations show when people join and where they're reading, so that it feels like you're all in the same room together. And of course it's all synced, so if you swipe something away on iOS, it's also gone on your other devices.

Finally, Google is making an effort to make photos less labor and time-intensive by making its data center your darkroom. In other words, the cloud will handle some of the time sucking tasks that are related to cleaning up photos.

It starts with backups, something Google already offers, only now it's giving you 15GB of free unified cloud storage, which you can allocate however you want between Gmail, Drive, and Google+ Photos.

Much more interesting, however, is Google's Highlight feature. If you think about the number of photos you're likely to take on vacation, it quickly becomes a daunting task when you get back home and discover there are hundreds, if not thousands of snapshots to sift through and edit. What ends up happening is you tuck them into a folder telling yourself you'll come back and power through them when you have more time, but that time never comes.

Google proposes it can pick out the best pictures of the bunch for you. Sounds too good to be true, right? Time will tell, but it sounds promising. It's not just a crapshoot wherein Google hopes to get lucky, there's some intelligent sifting going on. For example, Google won't highlight blurry photos, and if it detects duplicate images, it will pick no more than one of them. It also looks for poorly exposed photos and narrows down photos based on other factors, such as whether or not there are people in the picture and if they're smiling. It will even attempt to detect family members, giving those photos a social boost.

A little less interesting is Google's auto-enhance feature, as we've found similar tools to be of limited value. However, Google promises dramatic results using tonal distribution, skin softening, noise reduction, white balancing, red eye removal, and a whole bunch more.

Better Looking Google Maps

Google Maps rocks, that's something most of us can agree on. If you liked it before, you're going to love the new version, which Google rebuilt from "the ground up." Upon logging into Google Maps, restaurants and other places you frequently visit will be highlighted. You can also see more of the map by shoving aside and hiding the sidebar menus. There are Info Cards that provide details about different businesses and locales, some of which even show photos of the establishment you're looking up.

Send Money Through Gmail

Lastly, Google announced that it's folding Google Wallet into Gmail. Now you can send money to family and friends through Gmail, even if the recipients don't have a Gmail address. It's free to send money if you link your bank account to Google Wallet, or if you're using your Google Wallet balance.

In Gmail, just click the dollar sign icon to attach money to your message, and then send away. Some of you will see this feature now, others will see it over the coming months.

If you wanted to check out the entire Google I/O 2013 Keynote, check out the video below.

That wraps up the more interesting highlights of Google I/O 2013. Were you impressed or disappointed by Google's event? Let us know in the comments below!

Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

How to Download Without Installing Malware

Paul Lilly — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:57:43 +0000

A how to download PSA

When the **** did it become so damn difficult to download a program from the Internet? If you've recently tried to grab a screensaver or software utility from the web, you know exactly what we're talking about. Somewhere along the way, the simple act of downloading a program has become anything but easy, even for Internet veterans who aren't easily duped. Many download sites are now designed to test the wits of savvy users and prey on the impatient with link landmines that will blow up your browser with toolbars and other unwanted add-ons. Even worse, you could end up with a malware infection. Should you give up?...

Hell no! Downloading might not be as simple as it once was, but it's far from an impossible mission, convoluted download portals be damned. We'll show you how to wade through the sea of shady links and track down the program you're looking, but it doesn't end there. You also have to be careful when installing an application, as installers sometimes carry adware, especially ones for free programs.

Free download links are often plastered with malicious links and adware

To Click or Not to Click the Big Green Download Button?

When we posted our "20 Awesome Screensavers" article with download links to each screensaver, some readers thought we screwed the pooch and served up malware infected URLs. Rest assured we verified that every screensaver we posted was clean, but actually downloading each one can be an exercise in frustration. Let's walk through the process of downloading "The Matrix" screensaver.

The link we provided jettisons readers to where the screensaver is hosted on CNET's website. Here's what you should see when you navigate there:

CNET's download.com is a popular website so you might not think twice about clicking the Download Now button, but take a closer look.

The fine print indirectly admits to installing adware.

If you hover your mouse over the button, you'll discover CNET is using an ad-supported wrapper. Not all downloads on CNET's website use the ad-supported stub installer, but the ones that do are indentified as such (so long as you're paying attention), both on the green Download button ("CNET Installer Enabled") and via the above pop-up box.

Downloading and installing looks so simple and easy but it's often anything but.

If you choose to proceed, you'll be presented with several attempts like the one shown above to install third-party software in addition to The Matrix screensaver. Simply click the Decline button to skip these offers one-by-one rather than mashing the oh-so-inviting Accept button. If you learned anything at all from mythology, it's that you should avoid being tempted by Sirens, and download sites serve up plenty of them.

Do you really want to install random third party apps?

Some screens are a little trickier than others and offer only two options:

Full Installation (Recommended)
Custom Installation (Advanced User)

When you encounter one of these screens, check the Custom Installation radio button and then deselect any checkboxes asking if you want to install toolbars or other cruft.

The legitimate download button is often the hardest one to find.

If this seems like an unnecessarily long path to the end, that's because it is. Instead of jumping through CNET's third-party hoops, an easier way to grab The Matrix (and similar downloads) is to click on the direct download situated just below the download button. Easy cheesy, right?

This particular link has SEVEN download buttons. Which one is the legitimate one?

Lest anyone think we're picking on CNET, it's actually not that bad compared to plenty of other download sites that make things much harder than they need to be. It's certainly not uncommon to see adware/malware masquerading as legitimate download links. Some are worse than others. In the screenshot above, there are no less than seven links with the words "download" or "driver," but only one of them actually links to the file we're looking for. How can you tell? Once again, hover your mouse over each button/link and see where it points to. If it's a DoubleClick ad or anything similar, then move on to the next one. In this case, the second download button with a right-facing arrow directs us to a URL with the words "ARCHOS-101-XS-Tablet-Firmware-412-Download" contained within. That's the one we're looking for.

Scan for Malware

Virustotal.com is a great tool for sussing out malware

Once you've finally found and downloaded the file you're looking for, be sure to scan it for malware, especially if you grabbed it from a site you've never heard of. Use any on-demand scanners you have installed (such as a daily AV program and/or Malewarebytes), and also upload the file to VirusTotal, a free cloud-based service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs for dirty code.

Using Virustotal is extremely easy, especially with a browser extension

If you're a Firefox user, we highly recommend installing VTzilla, an official VirusTotal browser extension. The extension adds a toolbar to Firefox, which you can disable if you prefer, as well as a right-click context menu entry to scan hyperlinks with VirusTotal before visiting the site in question.

For further virus protection measures, check out our in-depth virus protection guide. Do you know of any safe downloading tips? Have a downloading horror story to tell? Share them with us and other Maximum PC readers by posting in the comments section below!

Computer Cases Roundup

David Murphy — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:39:27 +0000

7 computer cases reviewed: Cooler Master HAF XB,Thermaltake Soprano, Corsair Carbide 200R, and more!

If you thought that the only innovation in modern chassis design was the (long-awaited) switch from USB 2.0 ports to USB 3.0 ports at all price levels, you haven’t seen anything yet. The cases in our roundup this time around really run the gamut of features: From inexpensive cases that attempt to deliver a lot of functionality without fattening up the price tag, to simple-looking chassis that hide a wealth of must-haves, to some of the most eye-opening cases we’ve seen – that don’t quite stack up once you look beyond their crazy offerings. In other words, it’s a typical computer cases roundup.

Just to lay out our criteria a bit, here are some of the elements we’re typically looking for when we run the magnifying glass over a computer case: Features that take time and effort out of the installation or upgrade process, like screwless drive bays. Minimal annoyances – like having to snap off a case’s entire front panel just to remove its drive bay covers. Adequate cooling, ideally positioned such that one’s hard drives, video cards, and general motherboard area all receive a steady stream of air. And, of course, strong cable management: Nobody likes to open up a case and find a Medusa.

Beyond that, the great computer case race is anyone’s to win. As for how each manufacturer balances “cool” with “functional,” you’ll have to read on for all the gory details!

Cooler Master HAF XB

Don’t call this case “stumpy.” It bites.

Cooler Master’s HAF XB computer case is a hybrid design that attempts to kill two PC birds with one stone: An open-air design for system builders who want to be able to swap out their components like a pit stop, and a standard, covered chassis for those who like having four walls and a roof around their system’s precious parts from time to time. For the most part, it works—but we would have love to have seen a few tweaks to make the system even easier to use for the frequent parts-swapper.

The cube-like case leaves little room for error. Its 17.5x13x16.5-inch size split into a top and bottom half on the inside: Your ATX, Micro-ATX, or Mini-ITX motherboard rests up-top—pray you don’t have a huge cooler overtop your CPU, as you get just under six and a half inches of vertical space (from the silicon on your motherboard) to play with if you have any intention of attaching a 20-centimeter fan to the case’s top. The bottom portion of the HAF XB is where you’ll precariously thread your 7-inch-or-shorter power supply; connect up the case’s two front hot-swap bays; stuff your optical drive in one of the case’s two, tool-free 5.25-inch bays; or slap some SSDs in the four additional 2.5-inch bays provided.

It’s not very often you see a manufacturer going for the fabled, “cube design,” but this is not your standard case by any stretch of the imagination.

As for the hybrid bit we previously mentioned, Cooler Master has designed the open-air case to work just like that, with the case’s sides and top bare to the world. However, when you want to transform the chassis into a normal, box-like enclosure, you just need to reattach the case’s sides and top with the provided thumbscrews.

While the process is certainly easy for those who have ever screwed in a side panel before (that’s most of you reading this), we wish that Cooler Master could have used the kind of thumbscrews that remain attached to the case (or panel) after you’ve loosened them. Losing those at a LAN party would be a real nightmare. That, or Cooler Master could have used quick-snap latches instead – an even stronger match for this Transformer of a computer case.

The beauty of Cooler Master’s split-insides concept is that you only have the annoyance of stringing cables around the lower half once. Most of the parts you’ll likely manipulate sit up top.

The case gives you a lot of expandability for its size— including room for seven PCIe devices in all and videocards up to 13.1 inches in length—as well as two USB 3.0 ports on the front and two beefy, 1,800-RPM, 12-centimeter fans directly behind that for air intake. If you’re crazy enough to try water-cooling given the tight confines of this chassis, it does support a single 24-centimeter radiator on the front if you first remove these fans in addition to a single 12-centimeter radiator on the case’s rear. While indentations on the rear of the chassis indicated a place where tubing could have been threaded, Cooler Master oddly omits any rubberized holes for doing so.

The Cooler Master HAF XB isn’t for beginners. You’re going to get to pretend you’re a surgeon when you try to thread wires around the inside of this tight chassis, even given the HAF XB’s system-builder focus. It’s still a compelling case for tinkerers that comes with plenty of useful features, and one that’s worth looking into for those afraid to (or uninterested in) making the switch to a fully open-air design. Just don’t try to water-cool it.

Cooler Master HAF XB

Hot-swap drive bays, easy-to-access motherboard maintenance, excellent cooling

Removable panels need more than thumbscrews, tight chassis for huge CPU coolers and basic PSU installation

$99, www.coolermaster.com

CoolerMaster Scout 2

Cooler Master makes it easy to carry this case around.

There’s no doubt in our minds that the design of Cooler Master’s Storm Scout 2 chassis is going to draw eyeballs. On the outside, it’s a beautiful case – punctuated ever-so-slightly by red LED fan viewable through the case’s windowed side panel and ever-so-dramatically by the case’s unique, rubber-coated steel handle up top.

Looks can be deceiving. From the outside, this case is a winner. But from the inside, we’re a bit skeptical.

The case’s inside is less eye-catching. We love the three screwless 5.25-inch drive bays that merely require you to flick a switch from “open” to “lock” to secure your components in place. However, we’re a little turned off by the flimsier rails that Cooler Master delivers to secure up to seven, 3.5-inch hard drives in place; drive trays would have been better. Additionally, four of the drive bays have to go if you’re using a video card that’s larger than 28.7 centimeters in length – and there’s no easy way to just pull them out sans screwdriver.

Thumbscrews are your new friends for the case’s seven PCIe expansion slots, and you’ll have to install both standoffs and screws for your motherboard. That said, the Storm Scout 2 makes cable management easier with the five holes (three rubberized) Cooler Master cuts right into the motherboard tray–though they could have been a little bigger.

Our biggest problem with the Storm Scout 2 is its cooling—not due to its potential, as the case supports up to nine fans in total (a mix of 12- and 14-centimeter fans, but mostly 12-centimeter). Rather the case ships with just one fan preinstalled: The aforementioned 12-centimeter LED fan on the case’s rear. You can toggle the light on and off, as the flames shooting out from your hot components will be all the dramatic lighting you really need.

Two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports adorn the case’s front, which you can hide with a little pull-down cover if you so desire. It’s another one of the many tricks Cooler Master stuffs into the Storm Scout 2’s hat; we just wish we could have some more fans, too.

CoolerMaster Scout 2

Super-mobile case, easy cable management and good connectivity

Poor prebuilt cooling (one fan!), requires sacrifice of drive bays for larger videocards, flimsier rails for hard drive installation

$99, www.coolermaster.com

MSI Stealth

You’ll love this case’s color scheme, we promise

Were there an award for “best case color scheme,” MSI’s Stealth computer case wins by a mile from its lovely black and light-blue-accented aesthetic. As for the case’s design, however, MSI packs in a few problems to balance out the good bits.

Just wait until you pop off the side of this chassis: a pretty world of black and blue awaits you.

We never thought we’d have to struggle so much with this case just to get a simple optical drive secured into one of its three free bays. That involves popping off the front panel just so you can remove the 5.25-inch bay covers–annoyance number one–and then somehow use the case’s big, blue locking mechanisms of fail to roughly secure your drive in place. Spoiler: They not very secure.

MSI does provide full trays for the four hard drives the case supports, which alleviates our frustration somewhat. It also packs two graphics card stabilizers right above that–a fun and quasi-useful addition that allows the case to support video cards up to 31 centimeters in length, but some extra 2.5-inch bays might have been more useful in general.

What the case lacks in big, fat cable routing holes (you get four small, thin ones), it makes up for in the ludicrous amount of space between the rear of the motherboard tray and the case’s right side panel. You could hide a garden hose in this case, not just your power supply cables.

A single 12-centimeter fan in the front balances out a similarly sized blue LED fan in the front, positioned directly next to the hard drive bays. On the top of the case’s front are two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and a special USB port that dovetails with your MSI motherboard’s “SuperCharger” functionality for speedy device charging. If you haven’t drunk MSI’s Flavor Aid, however, it’s just a standard USB 2.0 connection. Great looks, polarizing design: The MSI Stealth chassis leaves us feeling a little blue.

MSI Stealth

Lovely aesthetic, plenty of room for huge videocards, front-panel connectivity with an MSI-themed bonus

Videocard stabilizers seem silly, horrible 5.25-inch bay locking mechanism (and installation process)

$99, us.msi.com

Click the next page to check out our new kick-ass best-of-the-best case!

ThermalTake New Soprano

A soprano could sing inside of this case and you’d never hear it.

Find a chassis that successfully combines practical noise dampening, useful features, and cooling can be a bit of a needle in the haystack sometimes—but in this case (pardon the pun), that’s Thermaltake’s New Soprano. The solid construction of this chassis creates an upgrading or installation experience that’s free of frustration. Our only complaint with the case, if you could really call it that, is that it lacks pizazz.

This case might look fairly simple on the outside, but it has just about everything you’d ever want or need. Trust us.

That said, give us function over pretty lights any day.

The jet-black exterior of the case uses a front-panel door to create a sleek, uncluttered aesthetic by allowing you to hide your components when you aren’t specifically using them. The door doubles as an excellent noise-dampener and, we argue, a heavier-than-you-might-expect blunt object for use when squaring off against midnight intruders or zombie hordes.

Two USB 3.0 ports sit alongside two USB 2.0 ports on the top-front of the case; we’re even more enthusiastic about the built-in hot-swap hard drive docking station for 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives that Thermaltake’s constructed on the top of the chassis itself. It’s a delightful and unexpected addition to the case that brings a lot of additional connectivity without harming the case’s overall look or feel.

On the inside, Thermaltake uses four simple locking mechanisms to keep your 5.25-inch device held tightly. Installing an optical drive requires you to remove the drive bay’s front panels— easily done without having to rip off any part of the case’s front. Four screwless hard drive trays rest behind the case’s secret weapon: A huge, blue-LED, 20-centimeter fan that delivers plenty of air over your drives without blowing out your eardrums to do so. Above the primary 3.5-inch bays rests a single additional 3.5-inch drive bay and a single 2.5-inch bay for your solid-state needs (both not screwless). Thermaltake positions the thumbscrews for the case’s seven expansion slots on the exterior of the case. While that saves you a little room on the inside—giving the case space for a video card up to 12.2-inches in length—it also means that it’s really hard to actually use your fingers to tighten or loosen the screws.

Thermaltake pulls out all the stops to make it as easy as possible for you to install or upgrade parts—minus the expansion slots, which will require a screwdriver.

Motherboard standoffs are built directly into the case–an excellent touch that saves would-be system builders a bit of time and hassle. A huge hole on the upper half of the motherboard tray exposes your CPU area for easier installation of aftermarket coolers, and that’s joined by five other holes on the tray itself (four rubberized) for cable management. There’s plenty of room between the rear of the tray and the case’s right side panel, even including the acoustical foam that Thermaltake’s attached to the panel to give your ears a respite.

The only other fan in the case is a single, 12-centimeter exhaust fan attached to its rear, and the only other fan you can install beyond that would be an optional 12-centimeter intake fan on the case’s bottom. That’s the trade-off of having a “sound-proof” rig: more potential for heat. However, Thermaltake’s done a masterful job of addressing this issue while building out a case that’s packed with just about everything you’d want to have—assuming you care more about function than flash.

Thermaltake New Soprano VO900M1N2N

Good cooling, great soundproofing, mostly easy installation, slick aesthetics

Expansion slots a little fussy with thumbscrews, case isn’t extraordinarily “flashy”

$119, www.thermaltakeusa.com

Xclio Touch 787

Meet the future, and the past, of cases.

This kills us—it absolutely kills us. The Xclio Touch 787 has one of the most innovative, fun-to-use, Star-Trekian features we’ve ever seen on a case. And the substantial air-cooling on this case feels just a few miles per hour short of a category four. It looks good; it’s one of the few cases that we actually really enjoy interacting with on a daily basis.

Words fail us. The touchscreen controls on this case must be seen to be believed.

But why, oh why, does Xclio have no idea how to build hard drive mounts?

Allow us to explain. The single most noteworthy and compelling feature of the Touch 787 is—as the name alludes—the giant touch-sensitive panel on front of the case’s top. It looks as if it was ripped out of a standard Star Trek: TNG episode, and it functions about as well. After wiring up the panel with a standard Molex connection, you can tap its huge, circular buttons to turn the case’s fans on and off; adjust their speeds to low, medium, or high; turn the fans’ lights on and off; or lock and unlock the panel itself (to prevent accidental bumping).

Call it gimmicky if you want, but the responsiveness of the controls – and pretty blue lighting when you’ve activated an option – is just downright cool. Unfortunately, Xclio seems to have spent most of its R&D on this case on just that— the panel. Or perhaps the fans, as this system comes with no fewer than ten 12-centimeter fans in total: One on the case’s rear, two on the top, one in the front, and six (!) on the case’s side panel. Cooling overkill? Yes. We appreciate the enthusiasm, but one large fan on the side panel (for example) could have pushed plenty of air at a lower RPM and noise level.

All the standard features on this case are the same as what you’d expect to find in this price range: Cable mounting holes, motherboard tray cutouts behind the CPU, locking mechanisms for the case’s three free 5.25-inch bays, et cetera. We’re not going to waste words going over these, simply because the design of the case’s 3.5-inch bays—or lack thereof— presents a critical flaw in any user’s enjoyment of this wind tunnel of a chassis.

It’s too bad that Xclio didn't put some more thought into this case’s internals. As is, they’re not very good.

To access the case’s two actual hard drive bays, you have to unscrew and take apart a stupid bar of-sorts that runs vertically from the case’s bottom to just under its 5.25-inch bays. Upon further inspection, however, Xclio actually wants you to mount your drives to this bar as well, just floating out there in mid-air. Presumably, Xclio wants to put nothing between the intake fan and your system’s motherboard, but it’s a bad design concept that’s ugly for cable management, annoying to work with, and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever: It’s the very definition of, “If it ain’t broke…”

If it wasn’t for Xclio’s choices in designing its mounting “system” for hard drives, we’d consider this case–loud and over-the-top as it might be–to actually be something worth considering if for nothing else than its uniqueness. The more we think about it, however, the more Xclio’s design decisions tease the idea that they don’t actually know how to build a functional case, just a really cool-looking one.

Xclio Touch 787

Amazing touch-panel controls, good cable management, more cooling than you’ll ever need.

Very loud, horrible design for hard drive mounting, plenty of wiring to manage even before you put any parts into the case.

$149, www.xclio.com

Click the next page to read reviews on the budget computer cases.

The Battle of the Inexpensive Cases

Want a case on the cheap? Be sure you don’t get what you’re paying for…

Here we go—a descent into the budget barrel. It’s understandable that you might be a little concerned about the quality of offerings you’re going to see in the sub-$100 case market. You have every right to be: Just go to your local geeky retailer of choice and check out some of the horrible cases on the shelves that get offered up at rock-bottom prices. We wouldn’t want to put our worst enemy’s motherboard into those; why should you install yours?

Of course, you can find some real diamonds in the rough, but you’re definitely going to have to do a little digging to uncover quality, inexpensive cases – especially given the sacrifices manufacturers typically have to make in order to hit these low price targets. We’ve dragged up two of these budget cases to show you just what we mean by the differences you’ll find at this end of the spectrum: Take a look!

Antec One

This case might be inexpensive, but there’s so much more Antec could have done

One… singular sensation is not this chassis. The mid-tower Antec One feels a little flimsy in a few areas, which otherwise detracts from some of the better elements in this ultra-inexpensive case.

The Antec One comes with three 5.25-inch bays that use pre-attached locking mechanisms to keep your devices all snug and attached. However, this is the kind of case that requires you to pop off the entire front panel in order to remove the grilled covers over the empty bays— be careful with that, as we definitely broke off some of the tabs on these covers when trying to remove them ourselves.

The Antec is light enough that you could probably balance it on your fingers and spin it like a basketball. (You-Tube that, if you try).

Antec positions the entrance for the case’s five 3.5-inch bays on the opposite side of the chassis–the right of the case, if you’re looking at it from the front, rather than the left. This decision boggled us at first, but the more we thought about it, it makes sense: You would have to pop off both sides of the case anyway were you to install the drives from the left side of the chassis (using the provided rails) and this method allows Antec manages to build in some additional space for much-needed cable management. It’s just a little weird at first.

The case’s seven expansion card brackets don’t come with screws pre-installed into the case; a bit of an annoyance for those looking to ensure that the flimsy tabs stay on at all times. We do, however, like the recessed side pane that sits behind a huge hold cut out for the top half of one’s motherboard: Cable-management and CPU cooler installations are a breeze.

Antec slaps two 12-centimeter fans in the top-rear corner of the case; none over the hard drives. You get two USB 3.0 ports on the case’s front; that’s it. That’s the Antec One: A price-conscious chassis that’s good in a pinch, but could be a lot better.

Antec One

Hard drive bay design is odd at first, but functional; screwless 5.25-inch bays; good cable management

Lacks screws on PCI brackets, no cooling on hard drives, frustrating 5.25-inch device installation

$49, www.antec.com

Corsair Carbide 200R

It’s not “super” inexpensive, but it’s worth saving pennies for

Delightful. Truly delightful. That’s the best way to sum up Corsair’s sub-$100 Carbide 200R mid-tower chassis. It’s roomy, it’s well-designed, and—most importantly— it doesn’t invite any annoying features or ill-designed elements along for its inexpensive ride.

The Carbide 200R doesn't win huge points for its looks, but there's a lot going on inside this chassis for its low price.

All of the Carbide 200R’s drive bays are completely screwless, a wonderful touch for those looking to make modifications to their system without busting out the tool kit. Popping off the flat, solid panels covering the case’s three 5.25-inch bays is easy and destruction-free— almost as easy as it is to slide and lock up to four 3.5-inch hard drives into the case’s left-facing bays. You can use screws to attach up to four 2.5-inch drives into a provided internal enclosure if you really don’t want your solid-state-drives to jiggle.

Motherboard standoffs are built directly into the Carbide 200R: Just slap down your board, grab a few screws, and you’re set. Five different cable routing holes cut directly into the tray make it easy for you to hide your ugly wires, and a large area cut out behind the top of the motherboard tray speeds along the (often agonizing) process of aftermarket CPU cooler installation.

The case comes with a single 12-centimeter fan in the rear and the front. While we would have preferred that the front fan was placed to push some air over your hard drives, at least it’s able to direct much-need cooling on your video card (up to 11.8-inches long). You can also stick up to five additional 12- or 14-centimeter fans around the case’s top, side, and bottom, as well as one more 12-centimeter fan in the front (covering your hard drives).

The case comes with two USB 3.0 ports on the front—more importantly, popping off the front panel to do any modifications to the Carbide 200R doesn’t result in a tangle of wires coming with it. It’s these little touches, and more, that make this case such an inexpensive delight.

Corsair Carbide 200R

Plenty of drive bays, lots of options for additional cooling, a great emphasis on reducing the amount of screwdriver time needed

Front preinstalled fan could have pushed more air over the hard drives directly, 2.5-inch bays still require screws

$60, www.corsair.com

Build a PC: Recommended Builds (May 2013)

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:35:56 +0000

Baseline, performance, and ultra PC builds!

What time is it? It's time to build a PC with our Blueprints! This month, we've built three rigs at three approximate price points: Baseline, Performance, and Ultra. Baseline gets you a powerful, no-compromises rig, suitable for gaming and content creation at 1080p. Performance gets you more, and the Ultra is for those who want a killer PC.

These rigs are lab-tested and editor-approved. Feedback is, of course, welcome. Tell us what you think!

Our baseline build represents the minimum level of performance we’d accept on a semi-strict budget (by our gearhead measurement, at least). This month, we wanted to upgrade to an AMD Radeon HD 7870 XT for a graphics boost, but we haven't gotten hands-on yet. The Samsung 840 Pro is our favorite SSD, hands down, and the 128GB version is surprisingly affordable at just over $1/GB, so we’re sticking with it for the time being. RAM prices continue to creep up, so we switched our PSU to the Seasonic M12II 650-watt to help bring the system price back down. That’s less wattage than we were getting from the Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 720W we used previously, but 650W is plenty, even if we eventually add a second video card for CrossFire.

For the Performance build, we upgraded from Intel's Ivy Bridge to its Sandy Bridge-E platform, where we have more PCIe lanes for multiple video cards, and a socket that should see Ivy Bridge-E CPUs through 2014. The Core i7-3820 can overclock using gear or strap ratios, despite not having the "K" that indicates an unlocked clock multiplier. We thought about upgrading the CPU cooler to something with a 240mm radiator, but we wanted to keep the budget under control. The Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 850W is a good buy at $120. It's a 100W boost over the Corsair HX750 we used previously, and it costs about the same. It's a lot of power, but we’ll need the extra juice if we decide to add another AMD Radeon HD 7970 down the line.

At the Ultra tier, money is of no concern, so we upgraded our case to the Corsair 900D. We love the Cooler Master Cosmos II that has been part of this build since we started this column, but it can't mount a 420mm radiator, and we want that option for the future. The Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1,200W is a 150-watt upgrade from the Thermaltake ToughPower Grand we were using, and it's about the same price while offering comparable quality and features. We also updated the CPU cooler from the Corsair H100 to the H100i since it produces less noise and lower temperatures, and offers software control over pump and fans speeds. On the GPU front, we considered swapping the GTX 690 with the slightly faster Radeon HD 7990, AMD’s new fl agship dual-GPU card. But at press time, the card was still experiencing frame latency issues, and the company only had a “prototype” fix for it that wasn’t final. We’re confident AMD'll lick the problem eventually, but it's hard to say when, so for now we’ll stick with the GeForce GTX 690.

Mother's Day Gadget Gift Guide

Paul Lilly — Wed, 08 May 2013 23:45:40 +0000

15 tech gadgets that even mom would like

It's not easy being a mother, that's something every human on the planet can agree with, regardless of gender. She's the one who put Band-Aids on boo-boos as opposed to dad who would just tell you to man up (again, regardless of gender) and rub some dirt in it. She's the one who sewed up your tattered Star Wars blanket long after it had seen better days, and she's the one who couldn't sit and relax for an evening to watch a recorded movie because you broke the VCR by shoving toys and peanut butter sandwiches inside.

Now that we're adults (legally speaking), Mother's Day is a time to atone for all our shenanigans as kids. Taking mom out to dinner is a good start, but what do you get her as a gift? That's where we come in. We've put together a list of 15 gadget gift ideas to show dear old mum that you appreciate her and that it's not so hard to be hip with the latest tech gear.

10 Things You Need To Know About Intel’s New Atom

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:57:42 +0000

How Intel's new Atom CPUs may be a game changer

10. It won’t suck.

Atom parts have long been the butt of our jokes for being the anti-performance parts that inspired the Netbook but anyone who ever tried to drive a Netbook for anything beyond browsing knows how much Atom’s sucked in performance. A dual-core, Hyper-Threaded 1.6Ghz Atom N2600 gives up a Cinebench 11.5 score of 0.47. That’s just barely faster than a single-core Athlon 64 3200’s score of 0.42. For reference, a Core i7-2600K gives up about 8.1 and a 3.2GHz Core 2 Duo E8200 gives you about 1.91. The actual performance isn’t known, but the new “Silvermont” version of Atom should offer far more performance than we've ever seen before.

Meet the new Intel Atom family

9. No more process sloppy seconds

Atom has long been the bottom bin of Intel CPUs. It didn’t get access to the latest process technologies and while Core 2 and Core i7 have been on a “tick tock” strategy where two new designs are produced on each process, Atom has plowed along with a one “new” design for each process. With Silvermont, the chip gets moved to the latest 22nm process 3D transistors. Even better for Atom will be the next-generation. With the introduction of the 14nm process, Intel will introduce a “tick” Airmont and then a “tock” chip that doesn’t even have a codename yet. This is just another sign of just how important Intel sees Atom to its future.

Intel Atom core block diagram

8. Silvermont probably won’t bring back Netbooks.

The Netbook was the hottest piece of tech that was introduced at the right time. Who didn’t want a $300 mini-notebook when the entire financial world was collapsing? Unfortunately most users who bought them quickly became disenfranchised with the performance of the Netbook. In fact, Netbook sales numbers look like a failed rocket launch. Netbook sales peaked in 2010 with 32 million Netbooks sold, according to IHS. This year, 3.97 million Netbooks will sell with IHS predicting just 264,000 Netbooks will sell next year before Netbooks go extinct by 2015. Many blame the death of the Netbook on the iPad and other ARM-based tablets but we like to blame Atom. If Netbooks had had decent performance from day one, they might not have cratered so badly. Even with Silvermont and say, Core i7-lite performance, will OEMs try Netbooks again or have they had enough? We think OEMs have moved beyond the Netbook which is a bit of a shame because if they had decent performance years ago, maybe they wouldn’t be the Dodo bird of PCs.

Silvermont's wide range of operation

7. Think of it as Atom i7 or Atom 2 Quad

Silvermont will be built around a modular design. Each module will feature two cores and Intel can stitch together up to eight cores on a die. Unlike AMD’s modular design that shares chip resources, Silvermont’s cores are separate cores that only share a common L2 cache. All previous Atom chips have continued to use the ancient front side bus to connect the chips but Silvermont will feature a point-to-point interface connecting to a system agent which will hook into the memory controller. Also important in Silvermont is the move from the in-order design of all previous Atoms to an out-of-order design. Out-of-order designs allow instructions to be executed out of order to greatly increase performance over in-order designs. For perspective, out-of-order CPU designs have been used by Intel since the Pentium Pro chip. Most ARM-based CPUs have also been in order up until the Cortex A9 chips.

The main penalty to out-of-order designs has been an increase in power consumption and die space which is why Intel turned to an in-order design for the original Bonnell-based Atoms in 2008. Intel says with its advanced 22nm process, it can now do an out-of-order design while keeping power consumption and die space to a minimum. Intel has also completely redesign Silvermont with larger branch predictors, improved decoders, redesigned execution units, larger L2 and reduced L2 cache latency. In a nutshell, performance of Silvermont will be a factor of 3x over the current fastest Atom’s with 5x lower power consumption.

Oh yeah, Silvertmont also gets SSE3.1, SSE4.2, hardware AES-NI encyprtion, hardware random number generation and several other instructions from the Westmere generation of CPUs.

6. Atom now gets Turbo too.

Intel’s popular and effective Turbo Boost makes an appearance in Silvermont which can now “burst” different cores up depending on the load. Intel says Atom also has the ability to run cores at different speeds as well. The company has previously pooh-poohed such an approach and still says it's more efficient to run all cores at the same speed when needed, but certain server, notebook, tablet and phone makers may want to intentionally run cores at asymmetric speeds to reduce power consumption sometimes.

Intel Atom Power Sharing

Click the next page to read about how it's faster and more efficient than ARM

5. Yup. From servers to phones

Silvertmont will go into micro-servers and scale down to phone iterations after introduced. And no, you aren’t likely to get a tablet or phone with an 8-core Silverton variant. Those are likely aimed at micro-servers which aren’t as power sensitive as a phone or tablet.

Intel Atom in tablets

4. No damnit, it’s not ARM

Analysts and self-appointed Internet experts have long speculated that Intel needs an ARM chip to compete with ARM because x86 can’t "get er done." For what it’s worth, Intel had an entire ARM division when DEC sold it the StrongARM family which turned into XScale. Intel sold XScale to Marvell in 2006 and apparently still has no regrets about it. Silvermont is pure x86.

Intel Atom workflow

3. Faster and more efficient—than ARM

The battle of the last three years has clearly not been Intel vs. AMD, but x86 vs ARM. ARMchair commandos have long said x86 can’t compete because it’s just too power hungry. But remember, ARM is no brainiac chip. Even the super weak sauce old iterations of Atom have been performance and on power parity with ARM chips (non-believers see here). Intel says Silvermont will easily stomp all ARM chips into the dirt. While, Intel didn’t actually directly say the ARM word during press briefings but you don’t have to be Steven Hawking to guess what CPU architecture Intel is comparing Silverton to. Even with the power consumption of ARM chips far exceeding Silvermont, those CPUs still can’t match Silvermont’s performance. Up against four competing ARM chips, Intel says at the same power use, Silvermont will be from 1.6 times to 2.3 times faster and consume from 3 to 5.8 times less power.

2. But the competition has eight cores.

Intel’s arrogance is pretty well known. But the truth is you can’t be arrogant if your products suck. That gloat has been fading of late but during our media briefings with Intel engineers, we could see the spring in their PowerPoint decks. We know, the proof is in the pudding, but Intel says Silvermont’s better cores out-perform competing ARM CPUs that use inefficient quad-cores. And yeah, that thing where they have eight cores? Remember four of the cores are low power cores that take over when the high performance cores aren’t needed. Intel says it's long explored such little core, big core approach and it’s never been optimal.

Intel Atom's cores

1. Intel’s war begins with Silvermont

When did the x86 vs. ARM war begin? That’s hard to say. Some say 2010, others say 2011 or even 2012. We’d say that when the war began didn’t really matter. What matters is how each side reacts. Intel has long been a dangerous dragon tends to slumber when not challenged. Need proof? Go and Bing Pentium 4 or Intel’s lack of interest at the high-end desktop game today. So does anyone want to piss that dragon off? ARM does. Over the last few years it and a merry band of dwarves have walked into the slumbering dragon’s cave, stuck a short sword in its side and threatened the dragon’s hoard of gold. Silvermont—if Intel’s claims are true—could very well indicate that someone’s going to get roasted.

7 Unsung Heroes of the PC Universe

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 03 May 2013 20:13:39 +0000

Honoring the PC components that don't get the credit they deserve

If you built your first PC more than a decade ago, you know that PC building has come a long way. Modern conveniences like cases with holes for cable routing, motherboards with labels, and right-angle SATA cables certainly help with the cumbersome bits. This article aims to pay respect to these unsung heroes of the PC universe. You can check out our picks in the gallery below.

Did we forget an unsung hero? Let us know in the comments!

Getting Loco with Video Cards

Tom McNamara — Fri, 03 May 2013 18:28:11 +0000

Maximum PC's Best of the Best Updated

We're closing in on Cinco de Mayo, which celebrates Mexico's Battle of Puebla fought on May 5, 1862, a victory against overwhelming odds and an important step towards Mexican independence from European rulers. These days, it's a popular holiday for getting drunk, dancing and making loud noises, but maybe that's just me. I think I'm gonna play it low-key this year instead, and take the opportunity to update our Best of the Best with a couple new entries: the EVGA GeForce GTX Titan and AMD's Radeon HD 7850.

This time around, we're changing the "high-end video card" category to the best "Single-GPU video card." Every GPU category will be getting a refresh. Because at Maximum PC, we care about your wallet.

Below, there is more text and words that you may find informative and entertaining.

And as always, let us know in the comments what you think about our picks!

Zombie Games Roundup

Evan Lahti — Thu, 02 May 2013 22:05:47 +0000

In the zombie apocalypse, your worst enemies might actually be humans.

The rules used to be simple: Don’t get bitten; destroy the brain. Zombie games like Left 4 Dead, Killing Floor, and Resident Evil shared a vaguely similar approach, even as they offered terrific takes on one of horror’s most ubiquitous subgenres.

But zombie games have matured. They've mutated beyond simply being zombie-themed shooters, and redefined what we know as the zombie FPS into more of a genuine survival game. You still have to get headshots and avoid getting gnawed, but there are new threats to manage. Thirst. Hunger. Darkness. Scarce resources. Untrustworthy strangers.

Who knew trying to survive the zombie apocalypse could be so fun?

A gun can’t solve every problem you have in DayZ, The War Z, and No More Room In Hell, in other words. These zombie games demand different skills: communication, leadership, a knack for navigation over open terrain, nerves of steel, and even a little deception will help you survive. In short, they’re the zombie games we’ve dreamed of: demanding and realistic survival simulations that ask a lot of you, but reward players with unforgettable, self-authored stories of sacrifice, horror, and survival. If you're unfamiliar with any of these games, make sure to read on to prepare yourself for the horro that's in store.

DAYZ

Everything you learned about surviving the zombiepocalypse was wrong
In April 2012, an unfinished mod developed by a former New Zealand military officer quietly released. The add-on was designed for Arma 2, a niche military simulation game from Czech studio Bohemia Interactive, known most as the creators of Operation Flashpoint.

Initially, DayZ arrived with little fanfare. “I developed it, essentially, in secret and that removes a lot of ego, it removes a lot of promises,” creator Dean Hall told PC Gamer last year. But DayZ would catch PC gaming by complete surprise. In just four months, it had drawn 1 million unique players. Hundreds of 50-player custom servers hosting the still-incomplete, alpha version of the mod sprung up in a matter of weeks. Almost 200,000 people were playing every day at the peak of the mod’s popularity in August 2012. The zombie game that gamers had openly fantasized about on message boards - an open-world, do-anything, go-anywhere survival game—had appeared out of thin air, albeit in a rough and half-realized form.

Even with placeholder animations, annoying bugs, and incomplete features, DayZ had a death-grip on gamers’ attention. Relative to the zombie games that preceded it, it offered unprecedented freedom and made other facets of the apocalypse—including fellow survivors—as much of a threat as the undead. Its style of realistic zombie arose partly from the inspiration of its creator. Hall had originally pitched the mod as a zombie-less training simulator, having endured survival training himself during an exchange program with the Singaporean military.

A lot of DayZ’s appeal is owed to Arma 2, whose Real Virtuality engine forms a foundation for its authenticity. Arma 2’s creators went to great lengths to create high-fidelity game technology, and DayZ benefits from sharing systems that model for vehicle fuel consumption and modular vehicle damage, a real-time night/day cycle, a working compass and detailed topographical map, voice chat that’s affected by proximity, and an engine that can render objects over long distances.

Loot is everything in DayZ. Your carrying capacity depends on the size of your backpack—a rare ruck can become a literal target on your back. DayZ’s rigid and unintuitive inventory interface, unfortunately, is a well-documented shortcoming.

A particular asset is Arma 2’s ballistics modeling, which distinguishes it from every shooter in gaming. Bullets travel parabolically in Arma 2 and DayZ based on their caliber, so the behavior of a hunting rifle, revolver, and M4A1 assault rifle, for example, is all significantly different. Getting a knack for your weapon is as important as just finding one—someone that knows the nuances of a low-end gun like a Lee Enfield (a bolt-action WWI rifle) is arguably more dangerous than someone holding an AS50 anti-material sniper rifle but doesn’t know how to dial-in its scope. Guns emit different amounts of noise, too—snipers usually find it safest to operate in teams for protection, as a single shot can ring a dinner bell for zombies two or three hundred meters away. For this reason, silenced sidearms and rifles are some of the most prized items in the game.

Chernogorsk (aka “Cherno”) is DayZ’s largest death trap. Erm, city.

To get your hands on high-end equipment, you need to scour the game world. You don’t complete quests or levels or experience points in DayZ, so typically you’re just worried about gathering useful gear—tools, food, and weapons—within the game’s enormous sandbox. One of DayZ’s masterstrokes is that the drive for gear always feels self-motivated; your needs and emotions naturally drive your goals. When you enter DayZ for the first time, you’re unarmed. You instinctively want to find a gun, but to do it you need to put yourself in danger: weapons and items only spawn inside structures, and zombies lurk where structures dwell. Other survival mechanics operate as motivators too. You need to eat. You need to drink, but true to Arma’s fidelity, you can’t fill your canteen in the ocean. I’ve been in situations where I would’ve traded grenades for a can of pasta, or nightvision goggles for a soda. If you’re injured, depending on your ailment, you’ll need to find morphine, painkillers, or antibiotics.

Surveillance is one of the pleasures of DayZ. It’s a game that makes looking and listening a genuine skill. Scouting an area for dangerous players (which you’ll need binoculars or a rangefinder for) is a good habit.

This isn’t a game where your health regenerates automatically, in other words. Actually, the quickest way to restoring your life in DayZ isn’t even something that can be done by yourself. Eating food slowly restores any blood you’ve lost from injury, but in order to use a blood transfusion bag, you need another player—meaning friendship (or temporarily trusting another player, at least) is roadblock to healing yourself. And interacting with strangers in DayZ—other players that, like you, want to find better gear—is inherently dangerous.

These intricate mechanics play out in one of gaming’s most detailed worlds. DayZ borrows Arma 2’s map, Chernarus, a 225km² country that’s actually a satellite-modeled slice of the Czech Republic (see comparison photos and maps here). Basing Chernarus on real topographic data grants it a feeling of authenticity that isn’t present in other virtual environments. Hills roll into unexpected ponds and forest valleys. Road signs are printed in Cyrillic. Powerlines run perpendicular to ruined castles. Villages and dense cities cling to the coast. The only downside is that Chernarus’ realistic scale? To get where you want to go, you might have to run three or four kilometers in real time.

DayZ’s Chernarus map is actually one of several playable worlds available for DayZ. Modders have ported other player-made Arma 2 maps into the mod, including the tundra of Namalsk, the jungle of Lingor Island, and a dense urban desert called Fallujah.

It’s worth noting that modders—the ever-busy carpenter gnomes of PC gaming—have ported several Arma 2 custom maps into the game. A popular one is Namalsk, a connected by a half-kilometer railway bridge. You can spy it and the other four currently-available landscapes here.

DayZ’s biggest innovation is the trust it places in players to find their own fun. Compared to conventional shooters, it’s barren of any cinematic content. But DayZ leverages complex systems and difficulty in a way that produces incredible stories and interactions that don’t exist in other games. Banal tasks like watching another survivor through binoculars and trying to determine where they’re going or if they’re friendly are meaningful safety measures. YouTube is full of funny, scary, and fascinating interactions between strangers and survivor groups, bandits and self-described axe murderers, do-gooders and kidnappers. For the patient player, the search for water in DayZ can be just as heart-pumping as a shootout. It’s the first zombie game to emphasize stories over shooting, and the first that makes human nature an implicit part of everything you do.

Click the next page to read about The War Z

THE WAR Z

A sincere form of flattery

In July 2012, faster than you could horde canned goods, a DayZ imitator emerged. Within a month of DayZ’s flash of popularity, a new studio told the gaming world that it was hard at work on its own player-versus-player and player-versus-zombie, open-world survival sandbox.

The announcement of The War Z was met with skepticism and cynicism flecked with curiosity. Its features were uncomfortably familiar: a huge, verdant open world dotted with mundane and military loot, a first-person and third-person camera, and dedicated servers, all laid out to support unscripted, persistent gameplay between zombies and other players. Even the look of its characters--baseball cap-wearing, backpacked survivors--resembled DayZ’s. The War Z wasn’t being subtle about its inspiration.

Using separate real-money and in-game currencies, The War Z allows players to purchase some basic items—like melee weapons and food—before they spawn into the game. If you die, anything you’re carrying is dropped.

But if this blatant borrowing of ideas resulted in a good game, would it matter? More details snuck out as gaming press got early access. The War Z would include a player-written questing system, appearance customization, the ability to place bounties on other players’ heads, an RPG-style skill system, and a microtransaction store for items. Perhaps most interesting was The War Z’s promise to offer something called Strongholds—small, private instances like a cabin in the woods, a farm, a small town on a cliffside, or a trainyard that clans or individual players can rent for money. Even if these features don’t appeal to you personally, they painted a picture of a game that was less of a clone than originally thought.

“In fact, we’re fans of the mod,” The War Z Executive Producer Sergey Titov said to VG247 in October last year when asked about DayZ. “Ultimately, we hope gamers end up playing both The War Z and the DayZ standalone. It’s difficult to compare at the moment, but although there are similarities, we tried creating a game that was a little bit easier to access and play, and that would allow players to be creative and create their own scenarios.”

There’s some consensus that this isn’t a “there’s only room for one of us in this town” situation, but a sign that this sub-genre is simply in the process of losing that prefix. Competition between companies usually benefits consumers, and The War Z has a lot to live up to. Being built atop a military simulator, DayZ carries a lot of inherent traits that lend itself to survival simulation, and not all of them are easily reproducible. But the other side of that coin is that The War Z isn’t burdened by some of DayZ’s inherent quirks, and seems to benefit from being coded from scratch. It’s offers a few simple antidotes to some of DayZ’s issues, like confusing inventory management, inaccessible weapon handling, and rigid animations.

It’s also favoring accessibility more than DayZ. The War Z does have permadeath--if you die, you lose that character and their items forever--but only if you’re playing with a Hardcore mode character. Normal mode simply temporarily locks your ability to play that character for 24 hours and removes any items they were carrying. Likewise, you can get a leg up on a new character by spending in-game currency that persists across all characters, so it’s easier to recover from a death.

A stamina mechanic is one of the small-but-significant differences separating The War Z from DayZ. You can’t run forever, but the undead can—sprinting into a town while out of breath might be all it takes to doom you.

The focus on accessibility extends to gameplay itself, where weapon behavior is more akin to games like Battlefield 3. An assault rifle or a pistol handles with the lightness and responsiveness you’d expect in an ordinary multiplayer FPS. You’ll still have to keep noise in mind when firing—letting loose with a sniper rifle will make you awfully popular in your part of the map. There are also small but significant difference between DayZ and The War Z in player movement. You can crouch and go prone in both games, but The War Z has a jump button. But more realistically, you can’t sprint infinitely in The War Z—running depletes a stamina meter that recharges over time, so you’ll want to conserve your sprinting until you really need it.

The War Z also features a few imaginative zombie types. “Sleeper” zombies deceptively lie dormant on the ground, but rise if they notice you nearby. The developers have also promised a rare “stem cell-carrying” zombie that only appears at night. “Visually they’ll look very different from other infected, they’re much more aggressive, fast and agile. They’re rare, they hunt only at night, so the best place to find them will be larger cities at night time,” says Titov. Killing one of these superzombies will yield stem cells, which are kind of a special currency within The War Z that can also be used to create a vaccine. Hammerpoint hopes that the relative difficulty of bagging one of these zombies will inspire some creative teamwork and competition among players.

Nighttime in The War Z is inherently dangerous. Flares, chemlights, and flashlights will help you find your way around, but any light sources will inevitably draw attention from other players.

These corpses lurk in a world about 160km² in size—about 70 percent the size of Chernarus in DayZ. Encouragingly, Hammerpoint has said that anyone who buys The War Z will receive additional maps that are released. The game’s stock map is inspired by Colorado, a rocky wilderness pocked with outposts, lakes, and small towns.

Click the next page to read about "No More Room in Hell"

NO MORE ROOM IN HELL

Expect at least half of your team to die.
Unlike The War Z and DayZ, No More Room In Hell doesn’t fit into the newly-born “outdoor survival game” category. It’s fairer to call it an advanced, hardcore take on conventional cooperative zombie games like Left 4 Dead. In development for a decade before releasing over a year ago, the Source engine mod was selected through Steam Greenlight to release as a full, free game on Steam, but you can play it now by downloading it from www.nomoreroominhell.com.

What NMRiH shares in common with DayZ (other than an awkward name) is the unapologetic way that it throws you into a brutal post-apocalyptic scenario with almost no instruction. You’re fragile. Bullets are scarce. And zombies will infinitely spawn until you complete the map’s tough (and partially randomized) objectives, like switching on generators or finding the keycode that unlocks a door. NMRiH’s unforgiving approach to zombie co-op practically guarantees that a few of your teammates will need to die as you trudge from your spawn area to the end of the level. Your eight-person survivor group is twice the size of Left 4 Dead’s, and a given round typically sees your team whittled down as players inevitably get separated, surrounded, and eaten.

Though it resembles Left 4 Dead, what No More Room In Hell shares in common with DayZ and The War Z is that it often makes fleeing from and avoiding the undead preferable to fighting them.

Most of NMRiH’s zombies are of the slow, vintage variety. They’re easy to evade, but much more durable in combat, so the danger arises from their numbers and players’ modest agility. You can only sprint for a brief period of time, so wandering into a cluttered garage with a single exit, for example, is sometimes all it takes to doom you. A handful of speedier zombies jog after survivors (some of which—harrowingly—are children), but NMRiH otherwise lacks any undead with special abilities like leaping, acid-spitting, or tongue-lassoing. This gives the game a more grounded feeling; the molasses-speed creep of the horde gives you room to react, but the absence of a revival mechanic and the relative weakness of weapons has a way of turning small mistakes into permanent death.

Also refreshing is NMRiH’s emphasis on immersion. Like DayZ, the volume of voice communication is based on distance, meaning a far-off teammates’ cries for help may go completely unnoticed. The game also doesn’t place any interface, crosshairs, or HUD on the screen by default, and all of its maps are pocked with corners that are absolutely saturated with opaque, impermeable darkness. A small antidote to this is the flashlight. It mercifully doesn’t require fresh batteries, but just as you’d expect in real life, you can’t hold it and swing a sledgehammer or operate an M16 simultaneously. This design makes the seemingly banal role of “flashlight holder” a vital role for guiding teams through unlit corridors—being the guy responsible for shining the light on enemies while your teammates whack away with shovels or chainsaws is genuinely helpful.

The melee weapons themselves take a lot of finesse to operate. Most of them swing slowly (and with a wind-up animation much lengthier than Left 4 Dead’s), meaning they’re nowhere near the weedwackers you wield in Valve’s co-op zombie game. And despite their decomposing state, the undead are durable, taking multiple hits to bring down unless you skillfully connect with their skull. A typical hand-to-hand fight is a tense tango of bobbing and weaving, angling to position yourself to just the right distance where your axe or machete can clobber a zombie but the zombie can’t hit you. This limited room for error makes individual zombie kills feel like a heroic effort.

Zombies spawn endlessly in No More Room In Hell; this isn’t a game that’s afraid to overwhelm you with enemies. Some maps stack dozens of zombies directly outside the spawn room, only giving you a handful of bullets and melee weapons to deal with them.

Firearms are also handled with a modicum more realism than Left 4 Dead. They’re scarce, and pistols don’t have infinite ammo—when you pick one up, it might have a meager six or seven shots waiting for you in the magazine. More, they’re tough to aim: shots that look like a sure thing through ironsights won’t always produce a kill. And like DayZ, most guns have a discrete ammunition type —you might find handgun ammo, but if it’s .45 ACP and the only pistol you have is the 9mm Beretta M9, it’s not going to help you.

Appropriately enough, a lot of NMRiH’s scares arise from the lack of room in its levels. Structurally, they resemble Left 4 Dead’s meandering, point-to-point sprints, but because aggressive collision detection between zombies and even other teammates means that it only takes a few zombies to block a doorway. About a half-dozen maps, with the community and the development team filling in more.

“Behind you!” The snail-speed crawl of zombies in NMRiH makes room for communication and decision-making in a way that isn’t present in most zombie-themed shooters.

My favorite, called Cabin, begins with a leap of faith. You spawn in a secure attic, and begin by combing dark corners for melee weapons, flashlights, and whatever you can find. But to start the level, you have to drop straight through a hole in the ceiling—a one-way trip that usually makes the first survivor in instantly popular . My usual tactic is to have this leading player lure zombies away from the entrance so the rest of the team can safely descend. They usually get beat up in the process, but it’s preferable to throwing everyone into a crowded, panicked melee.

A final twist on all this layered brutality is NMRiH’s infection mechanic. Zombies will occasionally grapple you, and if you or a teammate is unable to shake them loose, you’ll get bitten. You know what happens next: within minutes, you’ll drop dead, and rise again as an AI-controlled zombie. It’s surprising that the mod is the only zombie game we know of to model this classic horror trope.

NMRiH is a stand-out take on zombie survival, and the scariest multiplayer game I’ve ever played. Unlike Left 4 Dead, trying to kill every zombie you meet is the surest way to have your human card revoked.

Click the next page to read about the five most important zombie games.

THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT ZOMBIE GAMES

OVER THREE DECADES, THESE TITLES HAVE SHAPED (OR WILL SHAPE) THE ZOMBIE GENRE AS WE KNOW IT

Zombie Zombie

1984 (on ZX Spectrum), Spaceman Ltd.
One of the first games to feature zombies as its subject. Zombie Zombie had a very indirect way of dealing with the undead: You had to lure zombies up to tall buildings and then trick them into falling off to their doom. Coincidentally, it was one of the first games to use two-channel sound.

Resident Evil 4

2007 (on PC), Capcom
The RE4 PC port was particularly bad, but the game still stands as the best “actionization” of the zombie genre. Japanese difficulty, boss design, and pacing tempered by Western playability and an over-the-shoulder camera spawned hordes of imitators. Weapon customization lent meaningful progression to the dozens of brushes with undead creatures.

Left 4 Dead

2008, Valve
The reigning champ in zombie co-op, L4D’s mildly forking level design and “zombie director AI” combined to create movie-like campaigns that wickedly and dynamically threw threats at your survivor group as you progressed through each chapter. Another L4D innovation, asymmetrical multiplayer, has been copied in games such as Dead Space 2.

The Walking Dead

2012, Telltale Games
Telltale’s adventure spin-off of the Robert Kirkman comic book series has taken a novellike, “Choose Your Own Apocalypse” approach to the genre. Though it’s modest on interaction, choices you make—from whom to rescue to which friend should get a candy bar—affect the content of future episodes. The five-episode series has already been renewed for a sequel.

Dead State

2013, DoubleBear Productions
Zombie shooters have been done to death; Dead State is a turn-based RPG. Described as Fallout-meets-The Walking Dead, it’s being helmed by Vampire: The Masquerade writer/ designer Brian Mitsoda. You play as the leader of a group of survivors that’ve holed up in a Texas elementary school. The game earned $332,635 on Kickstarter in July 2012.

Click the next page to read about the five most incredible custom Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns.

FIVE INCREDIBLE LEFT 4 DEAD 2 CUSTOM CAMPAIGNS

L4D2 MAY LACK REALISM, BUT IT’S STILL THE BEST ZOMBIE-THEMED ACTION GAME AVAILABLE. THE MODDING COMMUNITY HAS CREATED HUNDREDS OF FANTASTIC CUSTOM CAMPAIGNS THAT ARE A CINCH TO INSTALL

Questionable Ethics

Fight your way through a white-walled, underground, secret research facility filled with traps (like a ceiling that drops cars on you) and endless tricks. Almost Portal-like in its devious cleverness, Questionable Ethics is the work of a Korean modder. Play the sequel after you’re done.

Helm’s Deep Reborn

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’ iconic castle siege is reproduced here with almost 1:1 authenticity, with the exception of L4D’s menagerie of uglies swapped in for Uruk-hai. This multistage survival map has you meat-grinding through hundreds of zombies, climaxing in a defense of—and then escape from—the throne room. Nonstop violence and calamity.

GoldenEye 4 Dead

An amalgamation of settings drawn from the 1995 Bond film, including a dam, runway, and a hidden space base in Aztec ruins. G4D is more than a pile of references: It’s a genuinely taxing and creatively designed campaign, and one that takes clever liberties with its source material. Be on the lookout for Easter eggs.

Let's Build A Rocket

Instead of a sprawling campaign that has you racing to the safe room as a finish line, Let’s Build A Rocket gathers the survivors around a small launch pad and hangar. Using a computer panel, you research new technology to unlock L4D2’s weapons as zombies harass, juggling these tasks as you and teammates slowly construct a rocket to escape Earth.

Suicide Blitz 2

A great example of the indulgent set pieces , Suicide Blitz 2 pushes the survivors through a bowling alley, maximum security prison, and finally to the 50-yard line of a football stadium for a titular stand-off against hulking zombie Tanks in football jerseys.

Zombie games have come along way and are continuing to evolve. What's your favorite Zombie game?