Hardware

Vizio CA24T-A4 All-in-One PC Review

Michael Brown — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:55:53 +0000

Bringing the sexy back—minus a few key components

Smart TVs are basically dumb PCs, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Vizio—one of the world’s most successful HDTV manufacturers—plans to grow by jumping into the all-in-one PC market. The Vizio CA24T-A4 is a surprisingly good rookie effort, but there is room for improvement.

The tiny keyboard delivers surprisingly good tactile feedback.

The 24-inch, 10-point touchscreen display is crisp, clear, and very thin (about .75 inches). It’s an MVA (multi-domain vertical alignment) model, with an LED backlight. Resolution is 1920x1080 pixels, which is typical of this class of machine (Vizio also offers higher-end models with 27-inch displays at the same resolution).

The display is mounted to a thin stalk rising from the pizza-box base that houses the machine’s guts. The display can tilt from minus-5 degrees to plus-20 degrees, which is fine for using the PC from a seated position, but it doesn’t tilt back far enough to use the machine while standing. Unlike the displays on the Asus ET2300 and Lenovo A720, it can’t be folded flat. It also doesn’t pivot or swivel left to right.

The CA24T-A4’s base is incredibly small—at just 1-inch high, it’s even thinner than the svelte Lenovo A720—but Vizio removed two important components to achieve that profile: The computer has neither a discrete GPU nor an optical drive. You won’t mind integrated graphics unless you’re a hardcore gamer, and the absence of an optical drive won’t matter if you acquire your movies, music, games, and other software online. But Intel’s dual-core 2.5GHz Core i5-3210M CPU and its HD4000 graphics is a 98-pound weakling when it comes to modern gaming with eye candy turned up, and we were grateful to have a USB DVD drive on hand to install some of our benchmarks. Gaming performance on the box could have been helped with higher-clocked RAM, but alas, Vizio went with DDR3/1333.

Vizio outfitted the CA24T-A4 with four USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI inputs (so you can connect both a satellite/cable set-top box and a gaming console or Blu-ray drive), and an eSATA port (which we’d happily trade for Thunderbolt for forward-looking compatibility). Everything except one USB port is in the back of the machine, so you won’t have ugly cables sticking out of its side; and unlike many AiOs we’ve tested, Vizio doesn’t hijack any of its USB ports to host a wireless dongle for keyboard and mouse. Actually, Vizio doesn’t put a mouse in the box—it provides a wireless multitouch trackpad, instead. Vizio tells us that this is to take advantage of Windows 8 gestures, but we can’t say we’re enthused about it: Trackpads are necessary on laptops, but they don’t deliver a lot of benefit paired with a desktop rig (unless you’re using the PC from the couch, and that’s an unlikely scenario with just a 24-inch display).

Vizio’s all-in-one delivers much better sound than we’ve heard from most computers, thanks in part to the presence of a subwoofer cleverly integrated into the computer’s detached power supply (Asus offers a sub for its all-in-ones, but at additional cost with most models). There’s a volume control and an HDMI toggle switch conveniently integrated into both the keyboard and the remote control. That’s a much better solution than integrating these features into the display, as Asus and Lenovo do. You can also use the HDMI display without needing to power up the computer (the keyboard controls don’t function in this situation, but the remote does).

The Vizio CA24T-A4 delivered very weak benchmark numbers. If you care about performance, the similarly priced Asus E2300 crushes it, thanks to its higher base clock, larger cache, and dedicated GPU. But if you anticipate using the Vizio’s HDMI display capabilities as much as its computing power, it’s the better buy.

$1,250, www.vizio.com

ASRock's Specially Coated 8 Series Motherboards are Waterproof

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:58:07 +0000

Don't try this at home.

Before self-contained liquid cooling solutions (LCS) became mainstream, water cooling enthusiasts would march over to places like Danger Den (R.I.P.) and order custom parts, fit them together, and then pray to Poseidon that he'd have mercy against leaks. Back then, water cooling aficionados sure could have used a board like any of ASRock's new specially coated 8 Series mobos. Using a layer of "Comformal Coating," ASRock says its treated mobos aren't afraid to get wet, a trait the company hopes the professional overclocking crowd will embrace.

"The special layer of Conformal Coating makes ASRock's motherboards invulnerable to conductive liquids, so overclockers won't have to worry about accidentally spilling liquid nitrogen, liquid helium, or even clam chowder over their motherboards while they are overclocking," ASRock explains. "Along with conductive liquids, Conformal Coating also protects the motherboard against dust, corrosion and extreme temperatures. It is the ultimate armor for the upcoming 8 Series motherboards."

ASRock demonstrates the feature in a short YouTube video, which we've embedded below. Bear in mind that the water you see being poured over the motherboard was routed to avoid the pins, which ASRock says still carries the risk of short circuiting. That means you probably can't get away with sticking one of these boards on the bottom of your fish tank, but should an accidental spill occur, there's a good chance your system will survive, or at least the mobo.

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Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX Case Now Available in White

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:39:48 +0000

It's bigger on the inside

You would be hard pressed to list mini-ITX cases capable of accommodating up to six 3.5"/2.5" hard drives. We also can’t think of too many, but we do know that Swedish company Fractal Design's Node 304 is definitely one such deceptively spacious case — the Tardis of PC cases, if you will.

The Node 304 has been on the market for quite a while now and, as some of you might recall, recently we even told you about a CyberPowerPC machine that uses it. But until now there was one big problem: it was only available in black. Thankfully, Fractal Design has finally expanded the color options and the minimalist case is now also available in white.

The Node 304, which has an MSRP of $89.99, can hold a lot of other things besides all those hard drives. Here are some technical specs:

Mini ITX, DTX motherboard compatibility
Two expansion slots
Six 3.5" or 2.5" HDD / SSD
ATX PSUs, up to 160mm in length (To fit in combination with a long graphics card, PSUs with modular connectors on the back typically need to be shorter than 160 mm)
Graphics cards, up to 310mm in length, when 2 HDD brackets are removed (Graphics cards longer than 170 mm will conflict with PSUs longer than 160mm)
Tower CPU coolers, up to 165 mm tall
Includes three Silent Series R2 hydraulic bearing fans and a three-speed fan controller
Fan filter for graphics card
Two USB 3.0 ports on the front ( includes internal USB 3.0 to 2.0 adapter)
Case dimensions (W x H x D): 250 x 210 x 374 mm
Case volume: 19,5 Liters
Net weight: 10.8lb

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Microsoft Announces Xbox One Console

Paul Lilly — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:26:44 +0000

An all-in-one home entertainment device.

Gamers have been eagerly anticipating the launch of Microsoft's next generation Xbox console, and today they finally got what they've been waiting for. Microsoft's next console, previously referred to as Durango and Xbox 720, was introduced to the world as Xbox One, a name that underscores Microsoft's intent to rule the living room with an all-in-one entertainment system that's equally adept at playing games as it is for watching live TV, chatting on Skype, browsing photos and videos, and more. The device itself looks rather large and almost VCR-like.

Microsoft's Don Mattrick took to the stage and talked about how the living room has become "too complex, too fragmented, and too slow." The Xbox One is Microsoft's answer to these problems, and much of the magic of the new console has to do with intelligent voice recognition and gesture control.

Navigation

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, demoed several of Xbox One's navigation features. One of big differences between the Xbox One and 360 is that the console recognizes who you are right off the bat. Say "Xbox On" and it will turn on your device and launch straight into your custom profile with your personalized home screen. It will also remember what you were last doing, in case you wanted to jump back into a game or movie that you had to duck out of prematurely.

One of the most impressive demos was Mehdi showing how quickly and smoothly the Xbox One can switch between tasks, going from Internet Explorer ("Xbox Internet Explorer!") to watching movies ("Xbox movie!") and live TV. It will be interesting to see what kind of relationship Microsoft and the Xbox One has with cable providers. It can also, of course, play games. The Xbox One recognizes gestures, too. Reach out your arms, grab, and close to bring up the Home screen, or expand to go back to where you just came from.

A new Snap Mode allows you to multi-task, to an extent. While you're watching a movie, for example, you can have Skype running in a sidebar on the right or look up content on the web via IE.

Live TV figures to be a prominent feature of the Xbox One. Say "Show the guide" to bring up a listing of TV shows and then navigate through voice control, by browsing favorites, or by seeing what's "Trending," which is a new tab added to the Dashboard. If you're bored with your program, you can say "What's on HBO?" and Xbox One will respond with a listing of shows and movies on HBO.

What About the Hardware?

As for the hardware, well, the Xbox One will rock an 8-core CPU with 5 billion transistors, 8GB of system memory, 500GB hard drive, Blu-ray drive (yes, the Xbox is finally getting Blu-ray!), 802.11n Wi-Fi, HDMI in/output, and USB 3.0 support. Beyond that, it's not clear if that RAM will be unified like it is on the PlayStation 4 or which exact processor and GPU Microsoft is tapping into, or whether it will be x86 based like Sony's console. We suspect those details will come to light in the coming months, and potentially at E3, where Microsoft will make several Xbox 360 announcements.

On the platform side, Microsoft described a three-in-one OS architecture:

Xbox software that gives developers deep access to the sysem and hardware
A Windows kernel
Special software to connect the two above OSes

Following the press conference, Nvidia revealed to us that the company will offer the console PhysX support. Whether that is on the GPU side or CPU side is still up in the air. Maximum PC has tried reaching out to Nvidia for more clarification on the matter to only recieve a "no comment" reply. Regardless, with PhysX support coming to the Xbox One, this will be especially interesting as earlier rumors pegged the Xbox One as using AMD components for both the CPU and GPU. This could theoretically mean the green and red team may be collaborating on the console in some capacity.

UPDATE: AMD has confirmed it is indeed designing an APU for the Xbox One. “AMD is very excited to be working with Microsoft on their next-generation Xbox One. The Microsoft Xbox One leverages a single-chip, semi-custom AMD APU, with custom components co-developed with Microsoft designed to enable unique attributes of the system Microsoft is bringing to market,” said Saeid Moshkelani, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD's Semi-Custom Business Unit.

UPDATE #2: A Microsoft representative confirmed to us that AMD would be the Xbox One's primary parts maker, stating, "AMD is our primary partner for the custom silicon that makes up our GPU/CPU SOC that is the heart of Xbox One. We don’t have any further details about Nvidia PhysX at this time, but do stay tuned."

Updated Kinect Sensor and Controller

A new Kinect sensor will be paired with every Xbox One console. It expands to 1080p, can read more joints than before, understands subtle movements like a flick of the wrist, and can even detect your heartbeat when exercising. Microsoft also updated the familiar controller so that it's more ergonomic, though retains the same semi-butterfly shape as previous versions.

Xbox Live

Sorry folks, Microsoft isn't giving up its subscription-based Xbox Live service in favor of free online play for everyone. The same memberships as today will exist, though the backend infrastructure is significantly overhauled. While today's Xbox Live service taps into 15,000 servers, there will be 300,000 servers powering Xbox One's Live service.

Microsoft will put that horsepower to use in part for better matchmaking. It will search for opponents in one game while you're playing another, and overall, Microsoft envisions a deeper, richer Live experience.

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Finally, Call of Duty: Ghosts made an appearance towards the end of the event. Microsoft announced that will continue its exclusive downloadable content (DLC) deal with Activision, ensuring Xbox One gamers get DLC before gamers on other devices.

There's a new game engine being introduced in Ghosts. It will run at a steady 60 frames per second while you control new characters in a new game world. The script is being hammered out by Stephen Gaghan, writer of Traffic and Syriana.

Dogs will be part of your squad and are able protect your team and sniff for explosives. Other animals, like fish, will move out of your way as you get close, which is part of a new artificial intelligence (A.I.) system. There will be dynamic events like earthquakes, and player-driven events too. You'll be able to customize your characters in multiplayer, choosing heads, bodies, helmets, and other gear.

"It will be the best Call of Duty game we've ever ever made," Activision's Erik Hirschberg declared.

That wraps up the highlights. Microsoft didn't announce a price or release date, instead confirming what we already know, which is that Xbox One will be available "later this year."

What did you think of the announcement? Are you as bummed as we are that more hardware details weren't revealed? Let us know in the comments!

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HGST Expands Notebook Drive Capacity to 1.5TB

Paul Lilly — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:52:58 +0000

Big storage, little drive.

HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital, announced on Tuesday what it claims is the highest storage density of any hard drive and highest capacity HDD for the mainstream mobile market, the Travelstar 5K1500. The new Travelstar 5K1500 is purportedly the industry's first 9.5mm to offer 1.5TB of storage capacity, though that's not all it brings to the table. High shock protection and low power performance are also traits of HGST's newest HDD.

That's all fine and dandy, but isn't the market shifting towards solid state drives?

"Contrary to popular belief, the mobile hard drive market is not being replaced by SSDs. We continue to invest in and serve both the traditional 9.5mm and 7mm thin and light HDD mobile markets as they offer the best cost-per-GB, performance and proven product reliability for high-capacity, mainstream, Ultrabook and A/V content creation notebook markets," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at HGST. "HGST continues to have a strong share in the 2.5-inch market and the new Travelstar 5K1500 hard drive is the latest addition to our broad line of 5,400 and 7,200 RPM 2.5-inch drives, giving OEMs, ODMs and integrators an opportunity to grow and differentiate their product lines."

The Travelstar 5K1500 serves up its storage capacity on three platters. It has 32MB of cache, a 5400 RPM spindle speed, and a SATA 6Gbps interface. According to HGST, it benches better in PCMark Vantage and PCMark 7 than its currently shipping two-platter 5400 RPM models.

HGST sees a broad market for its new drive, including notebooks, external HDD applications, gaming consoles, and all-in-one (AIO) desktop PCs. Initial drives will be available in June, followed by an optional self-encrypting version in the third quarter of this year. Pricing has not yet been announced.

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Sony Teases PlayStation 4 Console Reveal Ahead of Microsoft's Xbox Announcement

Paul Lilly — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:26:39 +0000

It's 'Game-on' between Sony and Microsoft.

Sony today provided a first glimpse of what its next generation PlayStation 4 (PS4) console will look like, though a quick peek is all you get. The reveal comes in the form of a 39-second YouTube clip that flashes between various different close-ups and a blurry shot of the square-shape console as the camera moves increasingly closer, though never coming into focus. Sony is planning to fully unveil the PS4 at E3 on June 10.

The timing of Sony's teaser video represents a bit of gamesmanship, as Microsoft is set to announce its next Xbox console (codenamed Durango) tomorrow morning. Thus will begin the next-generation console wars, though it will be a war of words and speculation since both companies are planning to make their respective platforms available to purchase this holiday shopping season.

One of the big things gamers will be paying attention to during tomorrow's announcement is whether or not the new Xbox will require an always-on Internet connection. Ex-Microsoft Studios employee Adam Orth ended up resigning after defending always-on devices on his Twitter account by talking down to other users.

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Retina Smetina, Samsung Showcases 13.3-inch Notebook with 3200x1800 Resolution

Paul Lilly — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:03:46 +0000

More pixels than you can shake a MacBook Pro at.

Samsung is taking high resolution displays seriously these days. How serious? Enough to launch a 13.3-inch WQXGA+ laptop at the Society for Information Display's (SID) Display Week 2013 convention in Vancouver. That works out to a 3200x1800 display resolution, packing more pixels per inch (276 PPI) than Google's Chromebook Pixel (239 PPI) or Apple's MacBook Pro 13 (227 PPI).

According to Samsung, the high-resolution notebook can deliver 30 percent greater power savings than that of existing LCD tablet displays, a feat it accomplishes by decreasing the number of driver circuits, thereby increasing the efficiency of the LED BLU.

Beyond that tidbit, Samsung refrained from revealing any other details about its upcoming laptop model. The company did say, however, that it also plans to show off a 10.1-inch WQXGA (2560x1600) LCD for tablets, a Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) mobile AMOLED display with the world's broadest color gamut, and an 85-inch Ultra HD (2840x2160) LCD TV panel with "extremely vivid color and low power consumption."

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Changing PC Landscape Puts the Pinch on BIOS Designers

Paul Lilly — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:10:35 +0000

Singing the BIOS blues.

It's the little guy that often gets overlooked in various circumstances, and when it comes to computers in general, BIOS makers fit that description, even though their chips and code play a big role in the operation of your PC. Like every other PC player, BIOS designers are feeling the hurt from weakening PC sales, leaving them to find alternative means to flip a profit amid a changing market place.

Insyde Software, Phoenix Technologies, and American Megatrends (AMI) have all started taking measures to deal with the impact of a slowed market, sources within the upstream supply chain tell Digitimes.

Each is going about it in a different way. Insyde Software, for example, is focusing on Android and server-related products to try and offset losses from the PC segment. Phoenix, meanwhile, reportedly "streamlined" its workforce to cut costs, while AMI is still looking for a solution.

BIOS makers are in a bit of a pickle. Some believe tablets are a passing fad that will no longer be around in five years, while Gartner predicts that tablet sales will top traditional PCs by 2017.

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Logitech Z323 Review

Michael Brown — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:20:24 +0000

2.1-Channel Speaker System offer cheap thrills

Logitech has built more computer speakers over the years than just about any manufacturer, and it’s learned a thing or two about building decent low-cost models. Take the 2.1-channel Logitech Z323 system: We could name any number of speaker systems that sound better, but few that are priced better.

The satellites tilt up to project sound at your ears.

You can literally see some of the ways that Logitech hit that low price point: The satellite cabinets are made from cheap ABS plastic with permanently attached cables that plug into the subwoofer. Each satellite has dual, 2-inch, concave-dome drivers (one is mounted in the front of the cabinet and the other in the back, to deliver what Logitech describes as “360-degree sound”). So the system performs best if there’s a wall behind the satellites for the sound waves to bounce off. Each satellite also has a front-facing port. There’s a volume control and power switch on the right-hand cabinet, plus one 1/8-inch headphone output and one 1/8-inch stereo input, to support a digital media player.

The compact subwoofer cabinet (it measures 8.7x5.9x7.2 inches) is fabricated from the typical medium-density fiberboard. It houses a small amp and a tiny (for a sub) 4-inch down-firing dome woofer. The amp delivers six watts (RMS) to each of the satellites and 18 watts (RMS) to the subwoofer. The sub has its own volume control, along with a pair of RCA jacks that serve as a second auxiliary input for a gaming console, DVD player, or what have you (handy features in a speaker system priced this low).

The Z323’s favorable price/performance ratio, however, applies to games much more than music. Playing games such as Borderlands 2, we were pleased with the Z323’s ability to render the sound of gunshots and explosions, and the conversations with friendly characters and the taunts of enemies alike were rendered crisp and clear (well, with the exception of those babbling psychos).

When we listened to music, on the other hand, the vocals sounded weirdly detached from the rest of the band—and it didn’t matter whether the singer was male or female or even what style of music was being played. We tried several singer/songwriters, including “Crossing Muddy Waters,” from the John Hiatt album of the same name, Marc Cohn’s “She’s Becoming Gold,” from The Rainy Season, and Nanci Griffith’s cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Techumseh Valley,” from her record Other Voices, Other Rooms (in all three cases, the tracks were ripped from CD and encoded as 16-bit, 44.1kHz FLAC files).

This sonic detachment wasn’t as much of a problem with instrumental selections, but that’s not to say the Z323 system delivered a stellar performance. When we played Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, which the composer recently remastered for Bowers & Wilkins’s Society of Sound label, the album (available in both Apple Lossless and 24-bit FLAC formats), sounded somewhat lifeless and flat compared to what we heard on more expensive speakers (including Corsair’s stellar SP2500 system). But you could almost buy four Z323 setups for the cost of one SP2500, so that’s to be expected.

f you’re working with a tight budget and need speakers primarily for gaming, Logitech has a good set in the Z323. If listening to music is your core interest, on the other hand, you should keep looking.

$70, www.logitech.com

Dell's Profits Plunge 79 Percent as PC Maker Mulls Its Future

Paul Lilly — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:02:42 +0000

Dude, who's getting Dell?

Dell's future is as uncertain as it's ever been, and not just because the PC market is in a slump as consumers flock to mobile devices. The other major unknown is whether Dell will ultimately accept Michael Dell's proposed $24.4 billion buyout offer and go private, or if the board will be swayed by Carl Icahn's alternate deal that would keep the company public. As all this unfolds, Dell (the company) is seeing its profits get sucked into a vortex of uncertainty.

The PC maker reported revenue of $14.1 billion for its fiscal 2013 first quarter, down 2 percent from the previous year. What's even more alarming, however, is that its profits are down 79 percent to $130 million. In the same quarter a year ago, Dell's profits totaled $635 million.

As expected, Dell put on its positive face when announcing the results.

"We made progress in building our enterprise solutions capabilities in the first quarter and are confident in our strategy to be the leading provider of end-to-end scalable solutions," said Brian Gladden, Dell chief financial officer. "In addition, we have taken actions to improve our competitive position in key areas of the business, especially in end-user computing, and it has affected profitability. We’ll also continue to make important investments to support our strategy and drive long-term profitability."

The world's No. 3 PC maker saw its end-user computer sales slide 9 percent to $8.9 billion. Dell's Enterprise division picked up some of the slack with revenue climbing 10 percent to $3.1 billion. Dell Services also saw some growth, increasing 2 percent to $2.1 billion.

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Velocity Micro Raptor MultiPlex XL Review

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:30:48 +0000

Is there still room for big a HTPC?

It’s hard to talk about the Velocity Micro MultiPlex machine without thinking back more than 15 years ago, to the earliest days of “PC-TVs” and “PC Theaters.”

Back in the late 1990s, vendors such as Compaq and Gateway were pushing Pentium II–based PCs capable of watching DVDs, displaying electronic programming guides, and browsing the Internet, along with other futuristic capabilities, on gigantic 36-inch CRT televisions (we say that both literally and sarcastically).

The MultiPlex is a traditional HTPC, but fully capable of playing Big Picture Steam games, too.

In comparison to those early pioneers of living room PCs, the Velocity Micro MultiPlex is like a starship dropping out of warp speed while you look on from a covered wagon trying to get over Donner Pass without having to eat your fellow travelers.

The MultiPlex chassis harkens back to those early PC-TVs, but rather than sporting a 266MHz Pentium II, a whopping 2GB hard drive, 32MB of RAM, and an analog TV tuner, the MultiPlex is pretty much state-of-the-art: liquid-cooled Core i7-3770K clocked up to 4.3GHz, 16GB of DDR3/2000, a GeForce GTX 680, 240GB SSD, and 3.6TB of RAID 5 storage. Besides Gigabit and 802.11n, and the Blu-ray drive, Velocity Micro opted for a Ceton quad-channel CableCARD tuner to help fill that massive RAID 5 array.

That RAID array, for the record, is made up of three 2TB WD Caviar Black drives. If one drive fails, you won’t lose it all—we’re just not so sure we’d care if we lost it, though. Since the MultiPlex is intended to quietly sit in the living room sucking up television through the Ceton card, a drive failure wiping out, say, every episode of Glee or The Walking Dead, wouldn’t be as bad as losing 2TB of your family videos and pics. Frankly, we think that a straight 6TB JBOD array would be just fine on a PVR box, but if you do intend to store your memories on the machine, the RAID 5 is warranted.

Performance of the box was in line with our expectations. Obviously, up against our zero-point system’s hexa-core and dual-GPU setup, it’s no contest. But against HTPC/gaming boxes like Digital Storm’s Bolt and Falcon Northwest’s Tiki, it’s pretty much a tie, as all three feature overclocked 3770K parts and GeForce GTX 680 cards. Of course, you might wonder if it’s fair to compare the MultiPlex against those much smaller HTPC machines. That’s a good question. Both the Tiki and Bolt are more likely to be used as simple SFF gaming boxes in your office, or in your living room as “Steam Boxes” running Big Picture mode. Recording terabytes of TV isn’t likely to be high on the list of their usage scenarios.

That’s actually where the MultiPlex comes in. It’s far more traditional-HTPC shaped and sized for the PVR chores, yet has plenty of firepower to run games at 1080p resolutions. Our one complaint might be that it’s a tad loud for pure PVR duties. If you’re watching, say, a Michael Bay flick, you’d never hear the fan and drive noise, but if you’re trying to catch the nuanced acting in, um, Jane Eyre on Blu-ray, you could find those sounds distracting. This won’t be an issue in gaming, of course, but it’s worth noting.

Pricing for the rig is fair. At $3,200 it’s a full grand cheaper than the Falcon Tiki we reviewed last September. The Tiki did, however, pack a pair of 512GB SSDs, which adds up, but then the MultiPlex has three drives plus a CableCARD tuner.

Overall, the MultiPlex brings a lot to the table if you’re still living in a cable world—we’re just not sure how many of us there are in today’s post-cable environment.

$3,200, www.velocitymicro.com

MiniX Neo X5 Review

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:14:04 +0000

Meet the android on TV box

We have some bad news for you and you’re not going to like it, as few parents ever want to hear anything negative about their baby. Well, here it is: Your so-called Smart TV really isn’t that smart.

The Android on TV box idea may be the future, but probably not this one.

Sure, the guy in the blue shirt said that your fab 60-inch plasma was top of its class and graduated cum laude, but the truth is, your TV spent most of its schooling playing beer pong and is a actually a class-A moron. The only reason it’s called “Smart” is because it was pledged as a legacy.

That’s where the MiniX Neo X5 comes in. Running Android Ice Cream Sandwich, this inexpensive black box gives your TV an actual browser and access to applications that aren’t coded in the language Ass++.

The Neo X5 sports a dual-core Rockchip RK3066 ARM processor with a quad-core Mali 400 graphics chip, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. For connectivity, it has 802.11n, Bluetooth, HDMI 1.4a, Fast Ethernet, and an optical S/PDIF out. For additional storage, the Neo X5 has an SD slot. MiniX even includes a short HDMI cable and USB OTG cable. For those of you who don’t subscribe to Obscure Ports Quarterly, OTG lets you use the box’s Micro USB port as a standard USB port, or—if we could figure it out—hook the Neo X5 to a PC’s USB port to use as a storage device. Think of it as a USB port that swings both ways.

As we said, we couldn’t figure it out and that’s perhaps one of the most vexing problems with the Neo X5. It’s pretty much stock Ice Cream Sandwich, but a lot of things were simply not intuitive or not working. We couldn’t, for example, figure out how to zoom in or out, and many apps that are intended for touch just didn’t work correctly for us. Granted, we were using it with a wireless keyboard and mouse, but that’s how the device would normally be used in a living room since the remote it ships with feels like it came out of a gumball machine.

The performance of the Neo X5 didn’t impress us, either. It felt sluggish in most instances, with a subpar user interface. Some benchmarks told us otherwise. We compared it to a Tegra 3–based Nexus 7 (admittedly not the most direct comparison, but a good measure of relative Android performance) and the X5 took most of the wins. The Nex7 certainly felt smoother but that’s likely due to Jelly Bean and its Project Butter improvements.

Overall, the Neo X5 feels underspec’d to us. Even the display at 1080p output looked so soft we had to double-check which mode it was in. Security is also an issue, as there is no way to secure the unit. Since you’d be logged into your Gmail account at all times on it, you’re leaving your email fly down for anyone on the device.

The Neo X5 is mainly marketed as a media player and it does fine there—to an extent. We could play various MP4 files, from GoPro cams to handycams to still images without hiccups, and there is an extensive set of codecs supported. Netflix was also fine but did exhibit more compression artifacts than we expected. YouTube videos were also pretty low-res despite being checked off as “HD.”

What we have here is essentially a work in progress. As is, it’s still far more usable and much faster than 95 percent of the “Smart” televisions on the market, but there’s much improvement to be had. MiniX is promising a Jelly Bean update at some point that may greatly change the experience—which it needs.

$110, www.polywell.com

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Still Headed for a May 23 Release

Paul Lilly — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:33:48 +0000

Rumors point to the GTX 780 launching next week.

Near the beginning of the month, news and rumor site Fudzilla reported that Nvidia was planning to launch its GeForce GTX 780 graphics card on May 23 at 6:00 AM PDT. That date is now only a week away, and so far, things are looking good. Withing naming anyone, Fudzilla says it's now heard from "multiple sources" that the May 23 launch date is accurate, at which time Nvidia's hardware partners will debut reference clocked cards.

As with most video cards these days, overclocked versions will inevitably pop up, though most of them will come out "several weeks" after the initial launch.

Reference cards are said to be using a GeForce Titan cooler quality since it's a high quality design. You may even spot overclocked cards using the same cooler, though vendors typically like to slap on their own cooling solutions, which often do a better job than reference at whisking away heat and run quieter to boot.

According to Fudzilla, the GTX 780 part based on reference specs should sell for around 500 Euros. That's about $645 USD, though PC component pricing doesn't always follow a straight currency conversion from one market to the next.

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Lenovo, Best Buy Now Accepting Pre-orders for IdeaPad Yoga 11s Convertible

Paul Lilly — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:56:57 +0000

Is Yoga in your summer plans?

Lenovo first began showing off its IdeaPad Yoga 11S at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this past January, and now four months later, you can place your pre-order on Lenovo's website or through Best Buy, the latter of which will carry the hybrid laptop in stores starting June 23. Why is it called Yoga? Simply put, Lenovo's convertible bends in ways that makes our back ache just looking at it.

The Yoga 11S is an 11.6-inch Ultrabook convertible that flips and folds all the way around to function as a tablet when desired. It has a touchscreen IPS display and is of course wielding Windows 8.

"Consumers around the world loved our first Yoga for its unique flip and fold and multi-mode design," said Jay Parker, president, Lenovo, North America. "We’re continuing to develop the Yoga franchise with the new Yoga 11S, and due to Yoga’s popularity already, we’ve created a pre-sale program so customers can get their hands on one before it even hits the shelves."

It's available in "Clementine Orange" and "Silver Gray," both of which start out at $800. For that, you get an Intel Core i3 3229Y processor (1.4GHz), 4GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, 128GB solid state drive, 4-cell battery, and Windows 8. Upgrades are available, including faster processor options, up to 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of solid state storage.

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Lian Li Launches Curvaceous PC-Q30 Mini ITX Computer Case

Paul Lilly — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:53:52 +0000

A case with curves.

If Leisure Suit Larry was the type to build his own small form factor (SFF) PC, we have little doubt he'd pick Lian Li's new PC-Q30 enclosure. After all, he's into curves, and the PC-Q30 obliges with a funky design that, once again, proves Lian Li isn't afraid to try something different. With its curved shaped design and large acrylic front window, Lian Li says its fully aluminum chassis is ready and willing to give onlookers a view of what it's packing inside.

"Whether in the living room, bedroom, or office, the PC-Q30 with its curve-shape and brushed aluminum finish takes visual command without being ostentatious," Lian Li explains. "Additionally, DIY builders can put their stylized internal components and intricate builds on full display – as they should not be hidden from sight."

Moving on from the aesthetics, the PC-Q30 supports graphics cards up to 7.8 inches long and can accommodate up to four 2.5-inch drives, which are mounted in a removable cage at the bottom. There's a 140mm rear fan to expel hot air, along with ventilation on the top and side for cool air to enter.

I/O connectivity consists of a pair of USB 3.0 ports and HD Audio jacks on the side.

Look for the PC-Q30 to be available in June for $149.

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