DIY

Article: NVIDIA: ShadowPlay Retroactive Recording, Official GTX 780 Specs, More

In an official press conference hosted by nVidia last week, the company made several announcements pertaining to video capture software, frametime optimization, and the GTX 700 series release dates, MSRP, and specs.

Article: SilverStone Raven RV02 Review - "Breaks All The Rules"

Enthusiast-class cases have trended toward heavier focus on ease-of-installation features, almost creating the perception that performance features were "maxed-out," so to speak. There's inarguably a place for enthusiast enclosures whose headlining acts are the likes of a 70-color LED strip (like the Phantom 820), but there's an equally-large market contingent that demands nothing but the...

Article: Mik's Picks: Weekend Hardware Sales - $50 1TB HDD, $90 SSD, 7970

Welcome to another edition of Mik's Picks! After scouring the interwebs for deals, I've once again found some decent deals out there for anyone looking to build or upgrade their PCs. Intel and NVidia sales aren't as abundant this week -- likely in the face of the next-gen launches for Intel and nVidia products -- but we found some other cool stuff. This week I found a controller sale, the Genius Gila mouse, a $90 120GB SSD, a $50...

Article: TechRAID2: GTX 700 & AMD 9970 Specs, Haswell Benchmarks

The past few weeks have seen the unveiling of nVidia's GeForce GTX 700 series, leaked specs, official AMD Radeon HD 9970 specs, benchmarks of Intel's Haswell HD 5000/HD5200 IGPs, and new advancements in UEFI BIOS. To say the least, it's been an exciting few weeks in hardware news. PAX East felt decidedly slow this year for hardware when compared against last year's launch of IB and the NUC, but now the hardware companies have had time to...

Article: NZXT Sentry Mix 2 Fan Controller Specs Detailed

In suit of its H630 silent case announcement and website redesign, NZXT has announced today that it intends to revitalize its Sentry series of fan controllers. NZXT's Sentry Mix 2 fan controller specs have been detailed in the announcement, and having tested previous models, we have a couple of thoughts on the unit. A review is pending.

Article: New: NZXT H630 Specs - Silent Gaming Case

NZXT's been teasing the release of a new addition to their quiet series of cases for nearly a week now, and as the reveal comes to fruition, we finally know what's in store: The H630. The H-series of cases from NZXT is considered their "silent"...

Article: $694 Big Picture Gaming HTPC Build - May, 2013

As Cable companies find themselves facing their impending obsolescence, we've seen a surge in interest for living room PCs that double as DVR replacements and gaming consoles; our original $357 gaming HTPC posts proved the affordability of these custom builds, but today we're out to prove their versatility.

Article: Mik's Picks: Weekend Hardware Sales - PSU, Video HW, SSDs

Welcome to another edition of Mik's picks. For this weekend's hardware sales, I found great deals on a GPU, HDMI cable, monitor, PSU, and an SSD.

Article: New: Budget Rosewill Patriot Gaming Case Specs

Rosewill's been known to silently release budget/mid-range products without major press fanfare -- the Line-M, which we spotted at CES, is a recent example of this. The new Patriot case had no official press release, but is freshly available on Newegg and has been posted to

Article: $508 Cheap Bastard's DIY Gaming PC Build - April, 2013

It's been a while since we've run a proper "Cheap Bastard's gaming PC build," and feeling a bit nostalgic (and bastardly-cheap), we've decided to revisit the topic of a $500-range gaming PC. As always, the parts detailed herein are meant to get you on the ground with a DIY, custom gaming machine for dirt-cheap, and we think we've put together a list of reliable parts at a good price.

Article: Corsair Obsidian 350D M-ATX Mini Gaming Case & Specs

A recent retailer photoshoot of impending Corsair product launches saw leaked photos of an upcoming Micro-ATX case, branded the Obsidian 350D. Some specs for the Corsair Obsidian 350D Micro-ATX case are already confirmed, including cooling/radiator support, cable management, and other features (see below).

Article: Steve's Picks: Weekend Hardware Sales - Mod Materials, SSDs, CPUs, NUC

Our regular "Mik's Picks" piece sees a break for Michael Mann this weekend -- I'll be filling in for the hardware sales. For this weekend's hardware sales, we've located sound-dampening case mod materials, an SSD, open air case, CPU, and Intel NUC.

Article: $1143 SLI Mid-Range Gaming PC Build - April, 2013

NVidia's GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost was first revealed to us in one of the most straight-forward press events we've attended: It's running on the known GK106 platform, uses nVidia's Boost 1.0 tech (not available on the original 650s), and it wants to dominate AMD in the sub-$200 market. There was only a single question asked by the press corps—"is voltage user-controlled?"—and that was...

Article: Corsair H110, H90 vs. NZXT X60, X40 Liquid Cooler Round-Up

As with any modernized adaptation of an existing technology, closed-loop liquid coolers (CLCs) have become almost fad-like in their adoption. In part, this is because CLCs actually do have very legitimate advantages over traditional air coolers - they are highly noise-to-temperature efficient, for one thing, and have an aesthetic appeal for some users. The other part of this liquid cooling craze, though, I believe is attributable to a...

Article: PNY XLR8 Modular Liquid Cooling for Video Cards - Create a Custom SLI CLC

The outlook for PC gaming is bright: The enthusiast market sector is steadily growing—as it tends to do leading into a new console generation—and our industry contacts are all in agreement. During meetings with nVidia, Intel, Corsair, and even AMD (who have a vested interest in the new PS4 and Xbox), we were told emphatically that they firmly believe hardware...

Article: Antec's 2013 Product Pipeline - PAX East 2013

It’s been a while since Antec put out a new series of products spanning their gaming and enthusiast-level lineups of chassis, power supplies, case fans, and CPU coolers. We came away from our CES coverage learning about the GX700 case, new renditions of the Eleven Hundred and P280 cases, and a new line of media products – portable speakers, headphones, stuff like that – but at PAX East, we were...

Article: NVidia GTX 650 Ti Boost to Compete vs. 7850 in Sub-$200 Market

A few days before all this PAX East craziness, we were able to join nVidia in a press conference about their new mid-range GPU; the news was under embargo until just now, but for all our mid-range and entry-level system builders, now's the time to listen up - your GPU selection may be impacted by the release.

Article: $540 StarCraft 2: HotS Budget Gaming PC - March, 2013

We've seen a lot of Heart of the Swarm machines hit the web lately, but frankly, they're all either overpriced or under-powered. The thing is, StarCraft 2 is already an incredibly optimized game (Blizzard's approach to gaming is to include everyone), so we don't need a 7850 for maximum settings, we don't need an i5-3570k overclocked through the roof, and we don't need a 700W PSU. If your sole purpose in life is to play Heart of the...

Article: $2038 Professional Game Streaming / Video Editing DIY PC

Few things tax hardware to the extent that video encoding and rendering tasks do; H.264 encoding (soon to be superseded by H.265 - which is incredibly promising) is one of the best-optimized, multithreaded encoding methodologies and scales predictably with increasingly-advanced hardware. Still, with all this optimization, it's easy to want more. Always more. Rendering is an arduous task that...

Article: $607 DIY Budget Gaming PC Build - February, 2013

Tax refund time is here and there's not much better of a way to reap the benefits of all those hours worked than to build your own gaming PC! I've scoured the interwebs for tax-time sales and, well, let's just say there's a lot out there for us to choose from. For a little over $600, this DIY budget gaming PC build is spec'd to run most games on high settings (or thereabouts) and is packed with goodies that should equip you to...