Latest News

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Sid Meier's Civilization V - Brave New World


OVERVIEW

Sid Meier's Civilization® V: Brave New World is the second expansion pack for Civilization V - the critically acclaimed 2010 PC Game of the Year. This new expansion provides enhanced depth and replayability through the introduction of international trade and a focus on culture and diplomacy. Your influence around the world will be impacted by creating Great Works, choosing an ideology for your people and proposing global resolutions in the World Congress. As you move through the ages of history you will make critical decisions that will impact your relationship with other civilizations.

Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World also introduces nine new civilizations, eight new wonders, two new scenarios, four new gameplay systems and dozens of new units, buildings and improvements offering an expanded variety of ways to build the most powerful empire in the world.

FEATURES

New Culture Victory: Spread your culture across the globe, dominate all other cultures. Create masterpieces with Great Artists, Writers and Musicians that are placed in key buildings across your empire like Museums, Opera Houses, and even the Great Library. Use Archaeologists to investigate sites of ancient battles and city ruins for priceless cultural artifacts. Become the first civilization with a majority influence in all other civilizations to achieve a Culture Victory, becoming the envy of the world.

New Policies and Ideologies: Enter the Industrial Age and choose the ideology of your people: Freedom, Order, or Autocracy. Each ideology grants access to increasingly powerful abilities, and serves the different victory conditions in unique ways. The choices you make will impact your relationships with other civilizations for the rest of the game.

World Congress: The importance of diplomacy is intensified and city-state alliances are more important than ever. Change the diplomatic landscape through a new World Congress that votes on critical issues like implementing trade sanctions against rogue nations, limiting resource usage, designating host cities for the World Games, and the use of nuclear weapons. Game-changing resolutions, vote trading, intrigue and a new lead-in to the Diplomatic Victory ensures that the end of the game will be more dynamic than ever before.

International Trade Routes: Build your cities into hubs of international trade by land and sea, creating great wealth and prosperity for your people, while also spreading religion, cultural influence, and science. The number of trade routes increases through the advancement of economics and technologies, the creation of wonders, and the unique abilities of your civilization. Will you connect to a closer city for a lower payoff and a safer route, choose a longer route with more risk for the bigger payoff, or perhaps point your trade route inward, sending vitally important food and production to the far corners of your own empire?

New Civilizations, Units and Buildings: Nine new leaders and civilizations are introduced, including Casimir of Poland, each with their unique traits, units and buildings.

New Wonders: This expansion set introduces eight new Wonders including the Parthenon, Broadway, the Globe Theater, and the Uffizi.

Two New Scenarios

- American Civil War: Fight the "War Between the States" from either the Union or Confederate side as you focus on the critical Eastern theatre of operations between the capital cities of Richmond and Washington.

- Scramble for Africa: The great colonial powers of the world are scrambling to explore the Dark Continent and extend their reach into its interior. Search for the great natural wonders of the heart of Africa as you explore a dynamically-generated continent each time you play.


Torrent Link :

NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Unboxing & Technology Overview Linus Tech Tips


Supercomputer Technology Revolutionary Gaming
The technology that power the world's fastest supercomputer is now redefining the PC gaming experience.

Introducing GeForce GTX Titan. Bring the powerful NVIDIA Kepler architecture technology that drive the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Titan supercomputer to your next gaming experience



Screaming Faster Whisper Quite 
Despite being ten time more powerful than its predecessor, the Titan supercomputer take up same amount of space and use same amount of power. Only GTX Titan bring this rare combination of raw power and incredible efficiently to PC gaming. 

NVIDIA® Kepler™ architecture gives you 2,688 NVIDIA CUDA® cores and 4.5 teraflops of gaming horsepower. Plus, GTX TITAN delivers a 384-bit memory interface running at a blazing fast 6 Gbps for an amazing 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth—enough power to handle even the most extreme high-resolution games.

With capability like this, you can play the most graphically intensive PC games with NVIDIA 3D Surround™ monitors at maxed-out settings.

Gaming Perfection Inside And Out
GTX TITAN's innovative vapor chamber technology uses water to transfer heat away through the process of evaporation. An extended fin-stack allows maximum area to transfer heat out of the system and keep it running cool. Together, they give you extreme gaming performance without extreme temperatures.

Its streamlined airflow design keeps GTX TITAN whisper-quiet for a more immersive gaming experience. The fan's precise control software also minimizes disruptions by gradually increasing its speed. With acoustics like this, you're always in stealth mode.

GTX TITAN is beautiful inside and out. It's meticulously crafted from the highest materials to give you a truly unique device with unprecedented performance. Made from high-quality cast aluminum and a liquid magnesium alloy, its design evokes the spirit of a supercomputer and the enormous capability within: a blistering-fast Kepler GPU and astonishing graphics horsepower to deliver the ultimate PC gaming experience.

Specification 

KEY FEATURES

  • NVIDIA® TXAA™ technology
  • NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0
  • NVIDIA PhysX® technology
  • NVIDIA FXAA™ technology
  • NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync
  • NVIDIA Surround
  • Support for four concurrent displays including:
    • Two dual-link DVI
    • HDMI1
    • DisplayPort 1.2
  • Microsoft DirectX 11.1 API (feature level 11_0)
  • NVIDIA Project SHIELD™-Ready
  • NVIDIA 3D Vision®-Ready2
  • NVIDIA SLI®-Ready
  • NVIDIA CUDA® technology
  • PCI Express 3.0 support
  • OpenGL 4.3 support
  • OpenCL™ support


Monday, 21 October 2013

Silverstone TJ07 - Black Pearl Reborn


Build & Watercooled by A.P.E.S
Sleeving by Topazzatech


Owner / Picture By : Asia's PC Extreme Syndicate

Customize Windows 8 Icon With OblyTile

If you’ve recently installed or upgraded to Windows 8 and have started customizing programs onto its new Start Menu UI, you’ll notice that the program icons are the same old icons placed in an oversized box.
You’ll see the program name under it and will be in awe at how out of place the newly added icons are with the rest of the Windows 8 theme.



We’ve found a handy program to spruce things up by creating awesome-looking tiles that match the look of Windows 8 apps on the Start Menu, something like what you see below. And you can get that look using OblyTile.



First thing’s first, the icons you see above are works from users of deviantART. OblyTile only sets up your tiles; you have to provide the icons or images for the tile. But not to worry, we’ll provide you with a few links which we’ve found to recreate the look and feel of the screenshot you see above.
Download And Try Yourself
The first thing to do is to download the latest version of OblyTile; during the time of this writing, the version used is OblyTile v0.8.6.

We also used icon packs from these 3 users of deviantART: soulrider95simobortolo and lrv94. Their packs include a variety of icons of the latest popular programs and games in ICO and PNG formats.
Getting Started With OblyTile
Run OblyTile (no installation required) and you’ll see a simple user interface. Here’s where you setup your own tiles with just a few simple steps. All you have to do is specify the program name (Tile Name), locate the program path, and add 2 images for the tile.

Start by entering a Tile Name, it can be unique and entirely up to you. Having a unique Tile Name would make searching easier on the Windows 8 Start Menu. If you don’t like seeing the tile names, you can choose to Hide Tile Name by ticking the box.


When you choose to hide it, the Tile Name which is usually under the image icon will not show.


The next step is ‘Program Path’. Here, you can choose to pin a program (.exe file) or a folder to the Windows 8 Start Menu. With this set up, clicking on your custom tile would open the program or folder which you have selected.

You can ignore the text box next to ‘Program Arguments’, leave it blank.


The final step is to set the Tile Image and Tile Small Image. Pick the corresponding image icons from your downloaded resources. Upload the same tile images to both ‘Tile Image’ and ‘Tile Small Image’. You need not resize them.
Do note that only PNG images are supported. You can use a program like Paint to convert ICO files found in the downloaded resources to PNG images.

If the PNG image is transparent, you can customize it with a Tile Background Color.

You can also set the ‘Tile Settings’ to start your program to ‘Run as adminstrator’ or in a ‘Single Instance’. If you don’t want to set this, just click on Save Tiles and your new custom tiles have been set up.
Managing Created Tiles
You can also manage the tiles that you have created with OblyTile by clicking on the Tile Manager button located at the top. This will open a list of custom tiles you’ve setup.
When you click on a program from that list, you can change the tile name and image, or update the program path of the tiles you have made.

You can ignore the other 3 buttons located on the left of the Tile Manager button as it is not needed to create your custom tile.
Conclusion
Once you’ve created tiles for all your favourite and frequently used programs or folders, your Windows 8 Start Menu will look a lot nicer.

Now that you know your way around OblyTile, go ahead and create your first custom tile!

Source : Hongkiat.com

Sunday, 20 October 2013

Samsung 830 - Anandtech

Samsung is a dangerous competitor in the SSD space. Not only does it make its own
controller, DRAM and NAND, but it also has an incredible track record in terms of reliability. Samsung SSDs were among the first I reviewed and while they weren't anywhere near the fastest back then, every last one of those drives is still working without issue in my lab today. It's also worth pointing out that Samsung SSDs are also one of the two options Apple rebrands and delivers in its Mac lineup. To continue to hold on to Apple's business for this long is an impressive feat on Samsung's part.In the early days Samsung actually sold reference designs to companies like Corsair and OCZ. Its partners could then rebrand and resell the drives, which they did. Samsung was still learning the market and after being overshadowed by Indilinx in the performance segment, Samsung retreated. Returning last year to the consumer market Samsung had a new strategy in mind: go directly after the channel. Seeing no point in reselling its designs to third parties, Samsung made its SSD 470 available to both OEMs and consumers alike. OEMs were free to obscure the Samsung name but consumers were told upfront what they were getting. Samsung even spent a good amount on packaging for their drive just to develop its brand.

Little is known about the 830's controller other than it is a multi-core ARM design. Samsung claims the controller has three cores however we don't have any information on the design of each core nor the type of work each one does. As SandForce has claimed in the past, SSDs are rarely limited by processing power. Instead it's the firmware, algorithms and internal chip memories that ultimately determine performance. Samsung has claimed in the past its multi-core design yields better performance under multitasking workloads but I'm guessing that's more marketing than substantive.
The enterprise version of the 830 enables full-disk encryption (AES-256) however Samsung's product literature doesn't clarify whether or not the same is true for the consumer version.

The Drive

The SSD 830 is the consumer version of Samsung's recently announced PM830. The two drives use identical hardware but they do differ in initial firmware revisions. Samsung will provide firmware updates (Windows only) via its Magician Software. Users are also able to configure the amount of spare area on the drive using the Magician toolbox. By default spare area is set at a standard ~7% (just what you get from the GB to GiB conversion), putting the 830 on par with Intel and Crucial in that regard.
The Samsung SSD 830 will be available to consumers starting in mid October. Although Samsung isn't announcing pricing at this time, I've been told to expect the drive to be priced around where the SSD 470 is today. I popped over to Newegg to do a quick price check on the 470 and came away relatively pleased:
Newegg Price Comparison
 256GB128GB64GB
Samsung SSD 470$384.99$214.99$114.99
Crucial m4$379.99$196.99$94.99
Intel SSD 510$569.49$279.99 
OCZ Vertex 3$439.99$209.99$134.99
For the most part the SSD 470 is priced competitively with the Crucial m4 and OCZ Vertex 3. Crucial is a bit cheaper across the board but the gap is at most $20. If Samsung can keep its 830 pricing on par with where the 470 is today, I'll have absolutely no complaints.
The 830 will be available in four capacities, each of which will be available in three different versions: bare drive, laptop installation kit and desktop installation kit. The bare drive will be the cheapest option while the laptop kit gives you Norton Ghost + a SATA to USB cable and the desktop kit gives you Norton Ghost + a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter (with SATA cable).
Samsung SSD 830 Lineup
 512GB256GB128GB64GB
NAND Type2x-nm Toggle MLC2x-nm Toggle MLC2x-nm Toggle MLC2x-nm Toggle MLC
NAND512GB256GB128GB64GB
User Capacity476GiB238GiB119GiB59GiB
Random Read PerformanceUp to 80K IOPSUp to 80K IOPSUp to 80K IOPSUp to 75K IOPS
Random Write PerformanceUp to 36K IOPSUp to 36K IOPSUp to 30K IOPSUp to 16K IOPS
Sequential Read PerformanceUp to 520 MB/sUp to 520 MB/sUp to 520 MB/sUp to 520 MB/s
Sequential Write PerformanceUp to 400 MB/sUp to 400 MB/sUp to 320 MB/sUp to 160 MB/s
Samsung sent us a 512GB drive, however as you can see from the table above the performance should be identical to the 256GB version. We are trying to get our hands on lower capacity versions as well to see how they perform.

Cooler Master HAF 922 : Project Chaos G.T CzK


Spec :
Processor : Intel Core i5 2500K
Motherboard : Asrock Z68 Extreme 3 
Ram : Corsair Vengeance 8GB Kit 1600Mhz
Graphic Card : Gigabyte HD5770
Casing : Cooler Master HAF 922

Watercooling :
CPU Waterblock : EK Supreme HF
GPU Waterblock : EK VGA Supreme HF
Reservoir : EK Multioption X2 150
Radiator : XSPC RS240
Pump : Swiftech MCP355
Fitting : Bitspower Sparkle Black 3/5 - 5/8
Tubing : Tygon 


Owner / Picture By : Iren Modz