By Kenny @ PureOC
In the past few years, the Closed Loop Cooler has advanced liquid cooling much further into the mainstream market. Today we’re looking at the latest, the Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate. It has a 360mm radiator with lots of cooling potential, and it looks very impressive. Let’s take a closer look and see how it fares in testing.
By Ian Cutress @ AnandTech
ASRock is quietly confident of its OC Formula range. We awarded the Z77 version because of its aggressive tactics at the $240 price point and while the Z87 model offered even more but at $330 it missed that sub-$250 market which cheaper overclocking builds are built on. The Z97 OC Formula ditches the Lamborghini on the box and comes back down to earth at $210, although the feature set becomes lighter as a result. The mainstream overclocking motherboard market is always hot at $200, so today we are putting the Z97 OC Formula through its paces.
By Niels Broekhuijsen @ Tom’s Hardware
In a blog post, Bryan Langley from Microsoft has written that the final version of the just-announced Windows 10 will come with DirectX 12. To be clear, the current technical preview that’s available does not come with DirectX 12.
In the blog post, Langley points out that Microsoft has also been working with Epic to create a DirectX 12 branch in the Unreal Engine 4 GitHub repository. If you’ve been granted a pass to the DirectX 12 Early Access program, you can already kick off your development for the new API on Windows 10.
What makes DirectX 12 so interesting is that it allows developers to code much closer to the hardware, resulting in reduced overhead and therefore improved performance. This is similar to AMD’s already-available Mantle API, which was designed from the ground up to deliver better performance than DirectX 11.
Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.
The Battlefield Blog has announced the release of the Battlefield 4 Fall Update for DICE’s first-person shooter. With this major patch for Battlefield 4, player movement has been improved to more closely match that of Battlefield 3, while still maintaining the animation fidelity of Battlefield 4. In addition, the High Frequency Network Update has now been added to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and is set to default. This makes the server update the client on what is happening with greater frequency, resulting in a smoother, more “correct” player experience. By popular demand, the Fall Update also introduces a new preset called “Classic Mode”. Rules on these servers hone back to Battlefield 2/3 and are designed for skilled players looking for more of a challenge and seeking stricter rules.
Click Here for more update information.
Tank Rally with special missions, custom map and free tank is now available
Wargaming today announced the all new game mode for World of Tanks, Tank Rally, is now live. Players around the world will be able to race in a free custom- built M24 Chaffee Sport on a modified version of the Port map through October 12th.
The new race mode pits teams of three against each other in mad dash to the finish line culminating in fierce battle to capture a control point. The track itself is filled with obstacles, ramps and explosions mixed with the onslaught of enemy fire challenging players to use their skills to emerge victorious. The only vehicle available in Tank Rally, the custom-built M24 Chaffee Sport tank, has been credited to all registered player accounts for free.
Tank Rally will also offer a special in-game medal, “Racer 2014,” which is awarded to each player on the winning team, along with a set of combat missions allowing tankers to earn experience points and credits.
Click Here for more information about World of Tanks.
Play large-scale battles with friends in team mode
My.com has today revealed the details of PVE missions, or team mode, which provides players the chance to take part in large-scale battles with a group of friends.
“This is an independent part of the game and a great alternative to PVP battles. The entire mission will take around 20 minutes, with teams of a maximum of four players. A group of friends or clan members can gather to complete a mission or you can join a randomly compiled team of fighters.”
Learn more via the Armored Warfare Forums.
Get more game information at the official Armored Warfare website.
Author: Brent Justice @ HardOCP
The MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G video card is making the GeForce GTX 780 and AMD Radeon R9 290 obsolete. This $349 video card puts up a fight and punches in a win at this price. The overclock alone is somewhat staggering. If you are about to spend money on a GPU, don’t miss this one.
By Stuart Davidson @ Hardware Heaven
The PC cooling marketplace is now filled with great looking liquid coolers which are designed to offer enthusiast performance along with ease of install. To many consumers though they are an expense, or a perceived risk that is a step too far and so air coolers remain popular. Recently one of the better known names in the cooling business launched a new revision of a popular product and today we cover that in our Cooler Master Hyper 612 Ver2 Review.
Source: TechCrunch
This morning at an event in San Francisco, Microsoft announced the next version of its Windows operating system: Windows 10. Starting tomorrow, Microsoft will launch a Windows Insider Program that will give users who are comfortable with running very early beta software access to Windows 10. This first preview will be available for laptops and desktops. A build for servers will follow later. Microsoft says it is opening up this beta process to get more feedback from more users early on, but also noted that this will be a learning experience for the company and that some experiments users will get in new builds may not make it into the final version.
