King_of_lion

In a nutshell: Lian Li is best known for its signature line of brushed and anodized aluminum computer cases. Their premium nature makes them prohibitively expensive for some buyers, but the company’s latest offering is priced to cater to a wider audience and might fit the bill for your next build, so long as you are alright with a SFF chassis. The Lian Li A4H2O is an 11-liter small-form-factor chassis developed in collaboration with DAN Cases. Based on the A4-SFX, the A4H2O supports Mini-ITX motherboards and can accommodate up to a triple slot GPU as well as a 240mm radiator for liquid cooling. Even with all of its cooling vents, you should probably expect a flagship GPU to run warm and loud given the small confines of the case. The chassis further boasts removable sandblasted aluminum panels, support for SFX / SFX-L power supplies, and PCIe 3.0 / PCIe 4.0 support depending on which model you purchase. A USB 3.1 Type-C connector, a standard USB 3.0 port and audio / mic jacks are located on the front left side of the case. Storage is limited to just a single 2.5” bay, so you’ll likely want to toss in a sizable drive or plan on some sort of external / cloud storage option. The Lian Li A4H2O is available to pre-order in silver or black from a variety of retailers including Newegg. Pricing starts at $129.99 for a model with PCIe 3.0 support and $169.99 if you need PCIe 4.0. No word yet on when it will begin shipping.

When the first trailer for Bugsnax dropped earlier this year, we knew little apart from a catchy song and edible creatures shaped like snack food. However, there was something special about Bugsnax and my curiosity was driven to extreme heights. Young Horses, the studio behind the indie game Octodad, had captured my imagination and refused to let it go until I boarded the earliest floating barge out to the island of Snaktooth. It's almost as if my own editor is speaking through the game somehow... In this story-driven puzzle-centric adventure, we take on the role of a journalist looking for their next big scoop in order to save their career. This is when a renowned explorer Elizabert Megafig reaches out to us about a mysterious island where creatures roam, somewhere far off in the ocean. Not knowing any better, our intrepid protagonist makes their way to Snaktooth Island only to find that Elizabert is missing. You’re caught up to speed by the interim mayor Filbo Fiddlepie, a grumpus with a heart of gold and get started on your journey to uncover the mystery of Bugsnax. The main premise of the story kicks off when you arrive at the main settlement on the island, the town of Snaxburg. Filbo asks you to help bring together all the former residents of Snaxburg, giving you the opportunity to interview each of them to find out what happened to Lizbert. In time, they start to open up to you and give you various requests for Bugsnax they want to snack on in return for their help. Since the game is heavily driven by its narrative, I can’t give too much away here. But I can assure you that the story is hilarious, well written and surprisingly emotional. The characters in Bugsnax have a depth to them that I did not expect and they wonderfully portray several unique personalities in the form of these cute, anthropomorphic creatures called Grumpuses. As you unravel the clues behind Lizbert’s disappearance, you get to know these characters and their relationships through side quests. While they’re not required to be completed in order to progress the story, I found myself actively wanting to know more about them, what kind of Bugsnax they would ask me for and how they would reach the conclusion of their personal story arcs. Everyone needs our help, especially Wambus and Cactriffy. What I love most about Bugsnax stems from these characters and how their diversity is handled. Eating Bugsnax turns your body into that snack, but deep down, you’re still the same person. After all, it’s what is on the inside that matters, not how you look. Which is a good thing, because the more Bugsnax you feed them, the crazier they look. Imagine having a pickle arm, popsicle leg and popcorn for teeth. Nice to meat you too. Speaking of which, let’s talk about the cute little creatures themselves. Bugsnax are creatures that are kinda bug and kinda snacks. With that in mind, you start to discover around a hundred different kinds of Bugsnax over the course of your game, each with their own specific method of capture and unique appearance on consumption. As you discover new areas, you come across Bugsnax native to these environments and it’s hard not to smile at their adorable design and goofy names. It really never gets old. Don't talk to me or my mini-melon snaks ever again. Catching Bugsnax is the main mechanic with which to progress through the game and let me tell you, some of these little critters do not want to be captured. Using a variety of tools you acquire, you’ll be figuring out the best way to trap them. While some of the mechanics of the tools can be a little finicky, it generally works in your benefit with some hilarious scenarios that come up. The physics in this game is geared towards fun and it shows when you work with tools like the Lunchpad and Trip Shot. Here are some quick notes on the more technical aspects of our review. Bugsnax runs fairly well and isn’t too taxing on the system resources, however there are significant load times on PC when moving between areas. Apart from the occasional bugs (no pun intended) and traversal glitches that have to be fixed with a quick save reload, the game is straightforward and easy to get a hang of. There’s no fast travelling between areas but you get the hang of traversing between the locations fairly quickly. Navigating the Journal which contains all your quests, record of Bugsnax and other useful information is intuitive and laid out well. I miss them already. It’s hard to define exactly what this game is in a few words. There’s an abundance of charm and sentiment in Bugsnax, and it takes you through countless flavors of love, perseverance and acceptance. A memorable cast of diverse characters elevates the game to a “must play” in my opinion. The half snack, half bug creatures are an exciting instrument of story-telling and Bugsnax utilizes them to weave a mystery of epic snak-portions.

DH1: DH2:

Accept..

In brief: Google is revamping the logo for its Chrome browser for the first time in eight years, though you’re unlikely to notice anything different upon first glance. The new logo is very similar to the previous one -- certainly no shiny Chrome in there anymore -- albeit slightly more vibrant. Elvin Hu, a designer for Google Chrome, showed off the new logo and revealed some of the thinking behind its design on Twitter. The overall shape and the red, yellow, green, and blue colors remain the same, though the blue circle in the middle is now a little larger. Another change is that the shadows sitting near the borders between each color have been removed. That makes the logo appear slightly flatter, but it does look more vibrant as a result. “Fun fact: we also found that placing certain shades of green and red next to each other created an unpleasant color vibration, so we introduced a very subtle gradient to the main icon to mitigate that, making the icon more accessible,” Hu explains. Hu notes that the design team created OS-specific customizations of the logo so they match the other icons on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, etc. Google did consider creating something more recognizably different from the previous icon, including adding a space between the borders, but this shrunk the overall size of the image and made it more difficult to identify next to other Google apps, apparently. Hu says users will start to see the refreshed version of the Chrome logo in the app, on the web, and elsewhere in the coming months, not that you might notice. In a follow-up tweet, the designer thanked users for the feedback, especially the ones related to the colors, adding that “We will be refining the direction based on them.”

Why it matters: In what is another blow to the component industry, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) and Western Digital report that contamination issues have been found at their joint NAND production factories. Western Digital says that up to 6.5 exabytes of flash memory, or 6.5 million terabytes, have been affected. An amount that will doubtlessly have an impact on the market. In a statement (via Tom’s Hardware), Kioxia said that operations were halted at its Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants due to a component containing impurities involved in the production of BiCS 3D NAND flash memory, used in a range of SSDs and other products. The company added that it hoped for "early recovery to normal operation." Western Digital’s statement is the one to reveal that 6.5-exabyte figure. It adds that the company is moving to implement necessary measures that will restore the facilities to normal operational status as quickly as possible. The stoppage occurred in late January. Given the length of time it takes to manufacture 3D NAND flash chips, the disruption is likely to be felt for months after production restarts, whenever that might be. The likely outcome will be a shortage of NAND-based products and a rise in the price of the companies’ SSDs. Another unanswered question is whether any of the contaminated NAND has made it out into products that have already shipped, which could lead to recalls being issued. Although 6.5 exabytes is not a huge chunk of the 207-exabyte total capacity that was shipped in consumer and enterprise SSDs last year, the news comes at a time when the tech industry is already suffering component shortages. The incident took place just a few weeks after Samsung confirmed it will be adjusting operations at its semiconductor manufacturing facility in Xian after the entire Chinese city was put under lockdown following a surge in Covid-19 cases. Micron, which also has manufacturing facilities in the city, said that staff and contractor reductions have impacted output levels of DRAM assembly and test operations.

Deep Silver, 4A Games, and Metr author Dmitry Glukhovsky have revealed Metro Exodus Artyom Custom Edition, a bespoke special edition for the upcoming post-apocalyptic shooter Metro Exodus. This custom edition is super rare, with only ten having been made, none of which are available for purchase through traditional means. Instead, Metro fans across the world will be given the opportunity to win them through multiple promotions planned for the weeks leading up to the release of the game. Metro Exodus Artyom Edition comes with a certificate of authenticity signed by Dmitry Glukhovsky and 4A Games' creative director Andrew Prokhorov and features a selection of Artyom's equipment from the games. Packaged in a steel ammo create (obviously) the Artyom Custom Edition includes the following: - Fully functional hand-made Nixie Watch - Gas Mask and Filter - A working Bullet Lighter made from a decommissioned shell - Hand-made steel Spartan dog tag engraved with the recipient's name - Leather map case with a map of the Aurora's journey - Certificate of Authenticity signed by Glukhovsky and Prokhorov "We worked with the renowned craftsmen at DB Props, based in the world famous Shepperton Studios to source and manufacture the ultimate collection for Metro fans" says Huw Beynon, Head of Global Brand Management at Deep Silver. "Each item is either an authentic real-world object or has been hand-made to recreate 4A's original designs. We Knew we could never do Artyom's signature Nixie watch justice with a replica; so we decided to make them for real." You can see the Metro Exodus Artyom Custom Edition in the trailer below: Additionally, 4A games have also announced that Metro Exodus will ship with a photo mode from day one, right out of the box, so players can take snappy screenshots of their bleak post-apocalyptic adventure. "Photo mode has been one of the most request features from the Metro community", says Jon Bloch, Executive Producer at 4A Games. "They're relatively rare in first person shooters, but the team have been determined to make it work and give Metro fans the opportunity to capture their own stories from the Russian wastelands." And finally, to get fans hyped for the game 4A Games have released an all-new Story Trailer for Metro Exodus that gives players a snippet of the hostile and dangerous world that they will explore once Metro Exodus launches next month. See for yourself:

v4 - Brush , text , darker

Accepted.

Accepted.

Removing @Nurche From the team / reason: inactive Removing @Love Pulse From the team / reason: inactive

Let's start well, i don't know who are you.

Respect our rules, Contra!

In brief: Do you find Windows updates a pain? Microsoft has looked into reasons why so many Windows devices are not always fully up to date and found that they need to be online for at least eight hours to grab the latest updates and install them correctly. David Guyer, program manager for Windows Updates in Endpoint Manager at Microsoft, writes on the Microsoft IT Pro Blog (via Bleeping Computer) that devices that don’t meet a certain amount of connected time are very unlikely to update successfully. Microsoft tracks how long a device is powered on and also connected to one of its services, such as Windows Update, using a measurement it calls ‘Update Connectivity.’ The company discovered that a device requires a minimum of two hours of continuous connectivity followed by six total connected hours after an update is released to update reliably. Microsoft also found that around 50% of devices running a Windows 10 build that’s no longer serviced don’t spend enough time online for the updates to be downloaded and installed. For those who are on a Windows 10 serviced build but have security updates that are more than 60 days out of date, the figure drops to 25%. Guyer recommends businesses meet the minimum Update Connectivity measurement by leaving their devices powered on overnight so that the updates can download and install properly. “Impress upon them [device owners] the importance of keeping their devices connected so their devices can stay protected and they can stay productive,” Guyer writes. Thanks to improved compression technology, Microsoft reduced the size of security and quality updates in Windows 11 by 40%, so the minimum Update Connectivity threshold for devices on the latest OS should be lower. You can check which devices have insufficient Update Connectivity using the Microsoft Intune app, navigating to Devices > Monitor, and selecting either the Feature update failures or Windows Expedited update failures report.

In our review we estimated that if we could get some decent B660 boards for around $160, the Core i5-12400F would be an excellent option to be unrivaled in the sub-$200 CPU market, and that does appear to be the case. But what if you want to spend even less on your CPU? Before we were recommending the Core i3-10100F, which was ~$120 back in October, but later in the holidays dropped to just $92, and now is down to $85, which is crazy considering how capable that CPU is. With decent B560 boards around $110, it’s a hard budget combo to beat. With that said, the new Core i3-12100F which we are testing today is coming in at $120, and with 4 P-cores it should easily outperform the 10100F for what really is a small premium. Yes, it’s ~40% more expensive, but we’re talking about $35 for what should be a much more powerful CPU. That’s one of the angles we’ll be looking at, while also comparing the 12100F to several other relevant parts. Before we jump into the benchmarks, let’s quickly go over the 12100F specs. This base model Core i3 processor packs 4 P-cores which operate at up to 4.3 GHz, and with Hyper-Threading there are 8 threads. Included is a 12 MB L3 cache, UHD 730 graphics for the non-F SKU version, and a max turbo rating of 89 watts. Intel Core i9 12900KIntel Core i7 12700KIntel Core i5 12600KIntel Core i5 12600Intel Core i5 12400Intel Core i3 12100F MSRP $$650$450$320$223$192$122 Release DateNovember 2021January 2022 Cores / Threads16 / 2412 / 2010 / 166 / 124 / 8 Base Frequency2.4 / 3.4 GHz2.7 / 3.6 GHz2.8 / 3.7 GHz3.3 GHz2.5 GHz3.3 GHz Max Turbo3.9 / 5.2 GHz3.8 / 5.0 GHz3.6 / 4.9 GHz4.8 GHz4.4 GHz4.3 GHz L3 Cache30 MB25 MB20 MB18 MB12 MB MemoryDDR5-4800 / DDR4-3200 SocketLGA 1700 For testing the Core i3-12100F we're using the MSI B660M Mortar Wi-Fi DDR4 with 32GB of dual-rank, dual-channel DDR4-3200 CL14 memory. This is the same memory we use for all our DDR4 testing and it’s typically faster than single-rank DDR4-3800 CL18 memory in terms of performance. The Alder Lake K-SKU CPUs have been tested on the MSI Z690 Tomahawk Wi-Fi DDR4 using the same memory and all boards were updated to the latest BIOS revision. We’ve also updated our Ryzen data, using the MSI X570S Tomahawk Wi-Fi. All gaming data has been updated for AM4 and LGA1700 CPUs with Resizable BAR enabled. The plan was to do the same with Intel 10th and 11th-gen Core processors, but performance went backwards in all instances with ReBAR enabled, so for now we’ve left this PCI Express feature disabled on those platforms. All application and gaming data was collected using the Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card running Windows 11. Let's now dive into the results… Benchmarks Starting with Cinebench R23 multi-core, we find that while not the most impressive CPU we’ve tested as of late, the 12100F is still mighty impressive for what it is, and perhaps more importantly, what it costs. The IPC of Alder Lake is so strong that just 4 P-cores can rival the multi-core performance of a 10th generation 6-core/12-thread processor like the 10600K, and even AMD’s Zen 2 based Ryzen 5 3600.

Okay, I finally get to reveal a Hearthstone card. Let’s not mess this up. Oh, it’s leaked already? WELL WHO CARES, FROST SHAMAN IS BACK ON THE MENU! With the latest expansion Fractured in Alterac Valley comes a chilling new Legendary card. Bearon Gla’shear is set to potentially rip apart the meta with FROST SHAMAN. Now this is a deck archetype that was heavily rumored to be part of the next expansion thanks to some leak (which wasn’t me, I promise) and was basically confirmed by the trailer. Now look at this magnificent beast and tremble in awe (alright, it’s an Elemental, I get it). According to Blizzard: “The Frostwolves and Stormpikes both made claim to the Valley. Little did they know, they tread upon the icy kingdom of Bearon Gla’shear. Whispered tales of Her Majesty ran throughout the ranks. Most dismissed them as a bad puns. Those that listened could seek her out in the treacherous wilderness of Alterac. Bending the knee would be difficult when one’s joints were frozen solid.” It’s crystal clear that Bearon Gla’shear is meant to be a mid-range card to rely on in Shaman decks that will typically revolve around Frost spells and freeze effects. Also, let’s not forget that there’s a certain Brilliant Macaw that an just repeat this battlecry effect the next turn should your opponent find a way to clear the board. It seems most likely that there’s going to be a Frost/Elemental hybrid deck that Blizzard is pushing for Shamans next expansion. It depends heavily on whether there’s going to be more Frost spells for Shaman though because currently we have… nothing? There’s no Frost spells in Standard as of writing this article. Nice. In Wild however, we do have an amazing combination that will finally make Moorabi somewhat useful as well as TWO frost spells. That’s amazing.

Working hard, Ex-staff, full experience, Pro

What just happened? If you’re a Discord user, you may notice a pop-up message about PlayStation integration when logging into the social platform today. That’s because the first stage of the long-awaited PlayStation functionality is finally rolling out. It was back in May last year when Sony Interactive Entertainment's president and CEO Jim Ryan announced a partnership with Discord that would see it integrated into the PlayStation ecosystem early in 2022. As promised, PlayStation users are now receiving basic support for the app. It started “gradually rolling out” to those in the US a few hours ago and will be making its way overseas soon—the feature has already arrived in the UK. Connecting your Discord app to your PlayStation Network (PSN) account works like connecting to any other service. Just select the User Settings cog in Discord, click on Connections, and hit the PSN icon. You’ll then be directed to a PSN login page followed by an agreement to link the two accounts. Once you’ve connected the accounts, you’ll have the option to display any PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 title you’re currently playing, as well as your PSN account name so Discord friends can add you. The feature works on all platforms where Discord is available: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web app. It’s noted that in the PSN Privacy Settings, your “PSN Online Status” and “Now Playing” visibility must be set to “Anyone” in order for your status to be visible on Discord. While there isn’t a lot of functionality introduced today, statements from Sony and Discord suggest this is only the beginning and that more features, such as voice chat integration (hopefully), will be added over time.