Benefits of CRT Monitors

Chances are you were more than happy to get rid of your old, clunky dinosaur of a monitor in favour of a new, sleek LCD or LED replacement. But were older CRT monitors really that bad? Performance wise, they certainly bring plenty to the table:

• Better colour representation than low to mid level LCD/LED equivalents 

• Better responsiveness thanks to a high refresh rate  

• More rugged - how many cracked LED screens have you seen in the last 5 years? And how many CRT monitors have you seen live 25+ year lives? 

• Given their sudden abandonment, CRTs can now be found dirt cheap online

While it's probably not worth replacing your current monitor with a bulky, power hungry CRT, it's most definitely worth holding on to if you've still got one.

The image below shows the difference in refresh rate between a CRT (left) and LCD (right) monitor:

Price Watch - Hose Cutter

Don't even bother trying to get through thick-walled watercooling tubing with kitchen scissors; you'll end up disappointed and possibly bleeding. Hose cutters are tools designed exactly for this purpose: to cut through thick hose without breaking a sweat. 

But don't rush off to your local PC store just yet - 'specialized' hose cutters for watercooling are nearly always identical to their gardening counterparts, and are usually significantly marked up. If you want, you can fork out $19 for Phobya branded ones, or you could go on eBay and pick up THESE for a mere $10. There's hundreds in stock :D

Cost effectiveness of PC Gaming

TNG Systems have shown that PC gaming is not only as cheap as, but cheaper than console gaming, assuming the following:

• Consoles/PC have same lifetime of 8 years
• Games are purchased legally
• PC system isn't upgraded during it's lifetime (though a mid range gaming PC will play games for 8 years without a problem)

The results are surprising, with PC gaming costing up to 30% LESS than an XBOX One and titles to match. All the specifications of the PC are listed in the graph. Be sure to read the footnotes, they provide further insight into the benefits of owning a PC.

FULL RES IMAGE - Cost of a Gaming PC compared to Next-Gen Consoles

Why a GTX780 might still be a better choice than an R9 290X...

Now that the 290X has hit store shelves and NDA has been lifted, the usual performance pattern between AMD and Nvidia flagship GPUs has been seen once again. Less biased benchmarks show the 290X and GTX780 to trade blows between titles, with no clear winner at resolutions that average gamers actually play at.

"But the R9 290X is so much cheaper!", I hear you say. That's true, by about 15% in Australia. However, there are a few key points that make the GTX780 still a better buy:

• 3rd party coolers - AMD have chosen a reference launch for the 290X, which means that coolers such as DirectCUII, Windforce, VaporX etc won't be available until 2014.
• Runs cooler
• Runs quieter
• More OC potential - the 290X (granted, in its reference form) has very little thermal headroom to be able to overclock without causing serious heat concerns
• Reference cooler is higher quality (objective) and looks better (subjective)

There are still benefits to buying the 290X, however. One immediate advantage is the bundling of Battlefield 4, though it's likely that many potential customers have already preordered it. Reference cards are excellent if you plan on watercooling; there's no chance of a custom PCB preventing the waterblock from working, and you don't waste money on an air cooler you won't use. Despite this, 290X waterblocks are yet to come to market.

With this new information, I can sleep easy knowing I didn't make a wrong choice :)

     - Leeroy

Thermaltake Chaser A71 Full Tower Case Review/Thoughts

My experiences with the A71 have been nothing short of excellent. From it's superior dust filtration, to iit's whisper quiet fans, the A71 doesn't disappoint in any way. It's a bit on the plasticy side, with most of the the case being made of plastic, but this does not detract from the overall experience. It is a full tower case, standing at about a foot and a half high. The case is chocked full of features, it's best being the AHCI drive bay. This is found on top of the case, and allows you to mount any SATA hard drive to be used in Windows, without the need for a reboot. This is super handy for transferring data from the old PC to the new one. It also contains 4 front side USB ports(2x USB 2 and 2xUSB 3.0 SuperSpeed).

This case extremely clean. Dust is filtered superbly, 4 months with 2 cleans, and there is hardly any dust on the inside of the case. There was zero dust to be found on my Stock CPU cooler (Intel) which usually gets extremely dusty. The case comes with 4 fans pre installed. Three large 200mm fans, one side input, one front input and one top exhaust. Cable management is also a breeze, with their being many grommets to pull cables through. The tool-less design for the drives is also fantastic. In all, the Chaser A71 is a fantastic full-tower enthusiast case, while also being relatively cheap. - Quaker

Why you need a NAS in your life

Network Attached Storage is brilliant. It offers the ability to have centralized network storage, often far larger in capacity than any external hard drive can offer, at speeds usually good enough to stream HD video content at. Although NAS enclosures can be a little expensive ($200-400 for a mid range, 4-bay NAS), excluding the cost of populating them with drives, the benefits listed below more than make up for it.

Here's why you should buy a NAS:

• Local file sharing - NAS is autonomous, can be accessed by all, or select few, in network
• Back up all your files
• Removes need for mechanical drives in your desktop - pure SSD excellence!
• Connect it to your TV - stream all your media
• Keep everything you torrent, forever
• Got a wireless router? Cool, wirelessly stream all the same content your TV can recieve to your smartphone or tablet!
• More complex RAID levels available (0, 1, 5, 6, 0+1, 10) without the need to purchase a RAID card
• Off-site storage - two NAS owners who know and trust each other can host each other's content through a private network. Off-site backups are considered essential by many experts
• Frees up system resources - less tax on your CPU and RAM
• That overwhelming, but good feeling you get when 40 seasons of TV, 6 weeks of music, a few years worth of photos and complete back ups of two PCs has still only used about 3.5% of your total storage capabilities.

Thinking about getting a NAS? I recommend QNAP and Synology for the enclosures, and Western Digital Red hard drives. Alternatively, Seagate Barracudas also provide good performance and lifespan at a reduced cost. Currently, 2TB and 3TB drives provide the best price/storage ratio for a seriously large NAS.

AMD Radeon R9 290X OFFICIAL Benchmarks!

AMD have officially approved two benchmarks from Tom's Hardware of their new R9 290X graphics card. These benchmarks clearly show the 290X edging out Nvidia's GTX780, however, one can't help but notice a few oddities about the benchmark.

AMD chose only to approve benchmarks of two games (BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider), and only when these games were run at a resolution of 3840x1260. It's fairly common knowledge that one of the R9 290X's big selling points is it's 512-bit memory bus, with 4GB of VRAM. Does this large bus give the 290X an unfair advantage? Probably, but who cares?The benchmarks don't lie...

Currently, the R9 290X will also sell at an initial price point lower than the GTX780, at roughly AUD$700. Most new releases of the card also seem to be bundling a copy of Battlefield 4, as part of AMD and DICE/EA's partnership for the game. Factor in support for AMD's Mantle API, and the 290X really does seem to be a threat to Nvidia.

Nvidia have responded, however, with the official confirmation of the GTX 780Ti. Hopefully, the increase in competition between the two graphics giants will drive prices down, and the consumer will be the real winner.