It was an honor

Dishonored is a refreshingly stealthy change of pace in a first-person-shooter market crowded with Call of Battlefield-type games that seem like they were produced by Michael Bay. Don’t get us wrong—we love blowing stuff up, and we love killing terrorists, but sometimes we like to take a break from the frantic action and unwind with a night of stealthy throat slitting and neck snapping. After all, a man’s got to relax. This is what Dishonored delivers; a game based on stealth, tactics, and the delightful task of mastering a broad range of mystical abilities, providing us with a much-needed change of scenery in an FPS landscape dominated by desert warfare shooters, Borderlands 2 notwithstanding.

Note: This review was originally featured in the January 2013 issue of the magazine.

The LL Cool J of water coolers: cool, but loud

Water cooling is the way to go if you're serious about keeping your CPU thermals in check, and the easiest way to dip your toe in the water-cooling pool is an all-in-one unit that bolts onto your case. You don’t have to mess with pumps, tubing, or fans, and the kits will work with any modern CPU and most chassis, so their appeal is maximum cooling with minimum effort. Thermaltake is on board with this concept, and offers three tasty all-in-one entrées in its Water2.0 series: a low-end “Performance” model, a double-rad “Extreme” model, and the mid-range “Pro” version we examined this month.

Note: This review was taken from the January 2013 issue of the magazine.

Good looks, solid installation, a few eyebrow-raising quirks

If you’re big on case lighting—you Cylon fan, you—you’re going to absolutely love NZXT’s latest Phantom chassis. It’s rare to see such attention to detail paid to simple illumination, as with the three separate strands of lighting found on the exterior, interior, and rear of NZXT’s Phantom 820. Cooler still, you can manually cycle through a variety of colors for the lights, so as to find the one that matches whatever mood you’re in at any given moment.