This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 281. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US.

This is Hitman the way we want it to be. I have a firm idea of how this game of cold-blooded contract killing should work, and I don t imagine it s that different from any other fan s. Stealth sandboxes with seemingly unlimited options for experimentation on the way to taking out Agent 47 s target. Done. As part of my demo of the new game, IO interactive switch the freecam on and fly me over the Parisian palace where it s set. The place is densely packed with detail. I m certain there s no way to see it all in one playthrough. 

Just as it should be. 

From the red carpet where Agent 47 enters the complex, the camera flies over an immense layout: a full-on party packed with busily socialising NPCs that extends from a veranda outside to a nightclub interior, over a catwalk where a fashion show is taking place and even to the dressing room where the models are getting ready. There are main entrances and side entrances. A basement, top floor and attic form part of the complex. On the first floor, a secret auction is taking place where some secret society individuals are bidding on classified materials being sold by your target, Viktor Novikov. There s even a dock, where a getaway speedboat is available. A helipad. A tower on the outskirts of the grounds that s as perfect a sniper spot as you re going to get. It s an exquisite, detailed killing playground, full of intriguing variables. The sort of sandbox the seminal Hitman: Blood Money was renowned for, and which was not reprised in the disappointing Absolution. But if this is a Blood Money level, it s one with ten years worth of upgrades in audiovisual detail. 

The end result will be a bigger experience than Absolution

The IO team themselves are keen to underline that this is a return to old Hitman values, and honestly, I m buying it, based on this confident showing of a characteristically exotic locale. Yet the manner in which this new Hitman is being sold couldn t be any more different to the older games—or anything else, in fact. 

It s a way of making and selling a game closest in theory to a season pass for an episodic series, but with a live element to attract early adopters as well. You pay your 40 / $60, and this December you get part of Hitman. Over the course of the next year, more and more content is added, bulking it out into a full game that s shaped by feedback from the community. The end result will be a bigger experience than Absolution, but the journey itself is pretty unusual. I ask the team to help me figure it out, and why they re releasing the game this way. 

It s pretty straightforward, creative director Christian Elverdam says. We re building a substantial game, it s bigger than Absolution. And what we re basically saying is you can get this for sixty bucks or a standard price, and that s all you pay. There are two different ways of doing it. You can be part of that live experience of the world unfolding and these locations appearing, and the joy and excitement of knowing that, hey, this location is coming soon , [and] being part of it when it happens. Or you can wait. At the end of it there ll be a box. So if that s what you re more comfortable with, that s what you get.  

Plumping for the early adopter option gets you a series of live, one-off assassination events that sound very cool. If you re there at the beginning, you ll take part in these live experiences or events we re going to do, Elverdam continues. If you imagine a location like the palace we re showing today, let s say it s the weekend and you get a ping on your phone, check Reddit or the internet in general, and you see that wow, a target is appearing in Paris, the target is going to be there for 20 hours . What we re thinking is you get nothing more than a portrait, so you can t really find the guy on instinct or anything like that. You ll have to work your way around the level, finding his routine. If you make him nervous and he escapes, he s gone forever. And then when you finally figure out what you want to do, that kill you do is going to be the kill you can do. You need to really pay attention because you re not going to get a do-over. We really believe that you ll have a segment of players who race to be the first. There ll be bragging rights, Twitch streams, discussions of different strategies. And if you re like me, you ll figure out [how people are doing it], and then you ll do it like this guy—but at the end of the day, you get that tension. You re there with the sniper scope and you only get that shot. Those are some of the experiences that are new, we think. It s a different take on the assassin experience. That s some of the stuff you ll miss out on. It s not like he s back next week.

It s not dissimilar to a Spelunky daily challenge or a live MMO event in theory, and the systemic nature of Hitman means there s a story for players to take away from a one-time mission and share with their friends—a bit like a Telltale episode. It s a smart way to keep people talking about Hitman for a year without selling them extra stuff, and I can t think of many other games where you could try a model like this and have it make sense.

I m not getting too carried away, though. It s all pie-in-the-sky right now, and there s also a risk of making the game feel too bitty and drawn out by selling it this way. Personally, I tend to play games in one- or twoweek chunks until I m done, and I let episodes of Telltale games stack up because I can t be bothered to wait for the next instalment. The challenge for IO Interactive is to show people these events are compelling enough for them to want to be in on the ground floor, instead of just picking up the finished thing a year later in a Steam sale.

For the team, this model is also a means of getting valuable feedback. We re humble enough to say there are things we will learn across this journey, director of production Hakan Abrak tells me. We just want to put ourselves in a position where we can react to tailor the experience even more precisely for our fans out there. And this takes a lot. We had to rethink everything. And the technology as well—it s not only about creating the biggest sandbox levels we ve done today, or the most NPCs, which we re proud of and have done, but this is also about building technology that can adapt and evolve with the content and the community. We know things and we have assumptions, but we re looking forward to learning more.

During the demo, I m shown the different ways Agent 47 can accomplish his missions: you can use a screwdriver to make a fitting fall off a balcony and kill someone, you can poison a drink at a bar. You can knock guards out, and their AI functions so that they work individually, instead of as a hive mind, giving you scope to manipulate them. You can use explosives, which enemies can defuse if they find and also take indoors to store, meaning you ve both temporarily distracted an enemy and got a weapon into the grounds without setting off the security alarms.

I m really impressed too by the promise of mini narratives that play out within this Parisian palace, which are designed to lead you to ways to get at your target. It s our ambition that we re going to create many different types of missions, says Elverdam. There s going to be a core gameplay element that s going to be the same, then when we talk about what s in every level, for example Paris, inside every level there will be something going on. In Paris it s a palace and a fashion show. And within that there are a lot of sub-narratives. You have the reporter in the beginning giving an interview, and she actually tells you she s going to meet Viktor Novikov later, which is one of your hooklines you can use.

There is a KGB station chief within the level meeting Viktor Novikov which is also something you can figure out. He s having violent arguments with his head designer backstage, and if you figure it out, it s a way to get Novikov on stage in the first place. Levels will have a lot of these small narratives in there, that will actually be something you can latch onto. We love the idea you re a voyeur: you re walking around listening and figuring out what your opportunities are. The tone of each mission is quite different—depending on where we are with the overarching story, but also so you don t always know what to expect.

That sounds much more like Hitman than Absolution did, to me, but these will be sandboxes with the benefit of Absolution s improved interface. We had a really good chance to say what s the best possible Hitman game we can build? Elverdam says. For us that meant looking at 15 years of creating Hitman to begin with. The first step was saying, we have a game like Hitman: Blood Money that a lot of our fans appreciate. In its essence it s a large sandbox. And it s also a promise that there s a hitman and there s a target. That was the base, the core of everything. Then we have a game like Silent Assassin where there s a tone, some world travelling, and you get the feeling that everything is a little bit more high stakes.

Paris is just one slice of what they re building over the next 18 months and beyond.

Regarding Absolution, we had a lot to build on there—we built a living world in Absolution where NPCs are talking quite a bit, where NPCs are lively. If you re hunted by guards or looking for opportunities, it actually matters that you pay attention, which we wanted to [carry] over into Hitman. I think we also accomplished building a stealth-action game in Absolution where people can pick up the controller and know what they re doing, and can reliably fiberwire people. The cores of different Hitman games came together in what we re doing today. That s the best way to explain the journey we ve been on since Absolution. The Contracts mode from Absolution will return, too.

Level variety is crucial to the team—Paris is just one slice of what they re building over the next 18 months and beyond. It s supporting the fantasy of globetrotting, travelling the world and killing these highprofile targets, Abrak says. The other part of it is deep core gameplay—some locations may give more vertical gameplay opportunities, some are more dense environments. That s also something we incorporate into locations.

Hitman could be back on form. IO is figuring out what a game starring Agent 47 needs to be in 2015, and the studio is banking on fans being part of that process. For all the potential buzz of its unusual business model, I m just happy to see a classic Hitman game underneath all that, a truly exciting sandbox experience that could finally give fans what they ve been asking for ever since the release of Blood Money.

This article was published in the June 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

Dual Nvidia Titan X cards await within this treasure chest

Length of Time: 1-3 Hours | Difficulty: Medium

The Mission

Over the past six months or so, we ve seen an impressive new slate of hardware arrive on store shelves, from Intel s Haswell-E generation of workstation CPUs sporting 6 8 cores, to futuristiclooking cases from Corsair, to the return of Nvidia s flagship GPU in the guise of the GeForce GTX Titan X.

We decided it was high time to bring this all together, while also checking out the viability of an older power supply and a new closed-loop liquid CPU cooler from Silverstone. To a degree, this is an out with the old, in with the new kind of build, where we bid farewell to a venerable piece of gear that s been eclipsed, while embracing the future of enthusiast gear.

We usually build with parts that have been released roughly within the past year, but not everyone is so fortunate. And sometimes you have equipment that s a little long in the tooth but still works fine. Might as well integrate it into a new build, right? And as we learned, the old stuff can still scale to handle cutting-edge gear, though the margin can get pretty thin.

Here Be Dragons

As much as we like the portable form factor of a Mini-ITX case, a full tower like the Corsair Graphite 780T is more forgiving. It also looks pretty cool. Since our power supply uses rounded cables, we need a little more leeway than usual for cable management (most vendors are moving to flat cables, which take up less space). Our PSU is the well-regarded Silverstone Strider Gold, which came out about three years ago. This 1,200-watt version can supply up to eight PCI Express cables, so it s pretty expandable. The unit is also relatively compact, with a length of only 7 inches. For reference, the Corsair AX1200 is 8 inches long. Compactness has long been a hallmark of Silverstone PSUs, and it s something we ve often relied on.

We ve paired our videocards with the Intel Core i7-5820K. This one has six CPU cores. It s slotted into an Asus X99-A/USB 3.1 motherboard. As its name implies, it has integrated USB 3.1 ports, and it can do NVM Express as well. Last but not least is the 240mm Silverstone TD02-E closed-loop CPU cooler, which is a recent update of the original TD02. Also in the mix is a 1TB 840 EVO we wanted to give one last run, and 16GB of 2,800MHz Corsair Vengeance low-profi le DDR4. We opted to not put a hard drive in this particular system, since we almost never use them in Build It.

1. Thar She Blows

We've come to enjoy these handy fan grills that pop out really easily when you give the top corners a simple click. Once you ve experienced them it s hard to go back to the days of wrenching off the front of a case in order to access fan mounts and drive bays. Behind this grill, we then discover two pre-installed 140mm intake fans, which glow bluish-white when powered up. You ve also got the option to mount three 120mm fans, or one 200mm fan.

If you remove the drive cages found just behind these fans, you can also install a variety of radiators, all the way up to 360mm. The cages are just screwed in—there s no need to reach for the hacksaw. These fans can plug into the case s integrated fan controller, which we ll talk about further on.

2. Batten the Hatches

The 780T also has a clicky grill on the top. Below is a recessed set of fan mounts, so you can put fans up here without obstructing things inside the case proper. This spot will take three 120mm fans, or two 140mm fans. If you have a 25mm radiator, there s enough space for push-pull, which puts fans on both sides of the rad.

We installed the Silverstone cooler s fans below the rad, to reduce noise. This required mounting the rad with some longer screws than those provided, because the 780T s mounting holes are padded with rubber grommets whose thickness adds another 3mm or so. Luckily, you can get inexpensive machine screws in a variety of lengths from a home improvement store. Take the shorties to act as visual aid.

3. Check Your Rigging

The 780T S integrated fan controller has four connectors (three shown here, because we re using three case fans), and they re all within easy reach of the case s pre-installed fans. Sometimes the rear exhaust fan s cable isn t long enough, but that wasn t a problem here. The controller itself is powered via a SATA cable, so make sure you have an extra when building with this case. It has three speeds, but these fans didn t get loud even when maxed out. The controller is handy because it frees up your motherboard s connectors for additional fans. We also note the connectors here are industry-standard 4-pins, instead of being proprietary.

4. Anchors Away

As has become common on the high end, the 780T s undercarriage has some niceties, as well. Down here, we have not one but two dust filters that can slide out for easy cleaning or replacement. Observant readers may also note the fan mounting holes peeking out. The bottom of the case has one 120mm fan mount that s immediately accessible, and another 120mm when you remove the lower drive cage, which means you have space for a 240mm radiator. That s useful for a water-cooling loop attached to a videocard. This case has some impressive airflow potential. The black ABS plastic feet on either side of these filters elevates the case about one inch off the floor, giving your power supply s intake fan plenty of clearance to get cool external air. Each corner of the feet is also rubberized for stability.

5. The Poop Deck

Not the cleanest wiring job we ve ever done, but that was kind of the point. We wanted to demonstrate how messy things could get, while still allowing the side panel to go on without any effort. We ve six rounded power supply cables coming through, a SATA data cable, three fan cables, a variety of front panel cables, and even cables from the CPU cooler mounted in the top of the case, which we tucked back here just to make things look nice and clean up front.

The Strider Gold s 24-pin motherboard cable was just barely long enough, but we had no trouble with the 8-pin power cable that went to the upper right-hand corner. The SATA power cable had to terminate at a 90-degree angle to fit into the back of the SSD, but that s not unusual. Once we were done back here, the tool-less side panel just angles in at the bottom and snaps shut at the top. To remove it, just pull the handle and lift it away.

6. In the Crow's Nest

In case you haven't seen how the 2.5-inch drive trays work, here s a close-up. It s another tool-less container, where you just slide the drive in from the side. The tab at the bottom snaps in when the drive has slid all the way to the left. The installation of the tray is also tool-less. There s a bracket mechanism on the other side of this tray that snaps in. It can be a little tricky to put it back in once you ve taken it out. We recommend a flashlight and some patience.

There are usually four of these trays in the back, but we removed the bottom-most one to make room for our cabling shenanigans. Admittedly, these trays are not snug. That s fine for an SSD, which has no moving parts. If you re using a 2.5-inch mechanical drive, the top of the tray has two screw holes to create a tighter fit. Whichever type of drive you choose, we recommend a flat SATA data cable if you need to face the drive outward like we did.

1.) Thanks to the height of this case, the radiator and fan disappear completely inside this upper shroud. 2.) With one PCIe cable removed, you can more clearly see that we re only using two of them, thanks to this cable design. 3.) We left the drive cages in so that you could visualize how much space a 10.5-inch card takes up. The 780T is deceptively large. 4.) Based on its size, you wouldn t think that this PSU could put out 1,200 watts. But Silverstone is known for compact designs.

Land Ho!

You may have heard that the Intel Core i7-5820K has fewer PCI Express lanes than the other Haswell-E CPUs, and that s true. But 28 lanes is still more than two videocards know what to do with, so we don t need to bump up to the 5930K, which would also cost us another couple of hundred dollars. Of course, we re already blowing two grand on our videocards, but we had multiple reasons for that. Besides having top-end performance, these cards also draw a healthy amount of power. We re also overclocking our hex-core CPU from a base clock of 3.3GHz to 4.2GHz, on all cores. And there are five case fans in this system. This combination of parts gives us a solid testing environment to see how this 3-year-old power supply still handles itself. Like we were hoping, it didn t break a sweat, and its fan made hardly any noise.

Sadly, this PSU can t be a mainstay any longer, because its PCI Express cables have a total of only four 8-pin connectors. Reference versions of a card like the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 use two 6-pin connectors and seem to signal lower requirements than we ve seen before; vendors can produce cards like the MSI Gaming 4G, which requires two 8-pin connectors. This PSU s combined PCIe cabling is nice, though. Each has both an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector. So if the card doesn t need more cables than that, you only need one per card. That helps with cable management and makes the case interior look cleaner.

The company s TD02-E closed-loop CPU cooler, meanwhile, came out earlier this year. Despite having to cool six Haswell-E cores running 900MHz faster than their base clock, our temps never got above 72 degrees Celsius. You could definitely hear the fans working to keep things cool, but it was never distracting. Part of this is thanks to the radiator s dense fin array, and that requires fans capable of moving a lot of air, but Silverstone is no slouch in the fan department either. The two bundled units are rated to move up to 92.5 cubic feet per minute. For reference, the Corsair H100i is rated to move up to 77 CFM. For an 8-core CPU, we d still recommend at least the H110i GT, if not custom water cooling. But the TD02-E did impressively well with our respectably overclocked i7-5820K. Overall, we enjoyed building this rig and finding out what this gear was capable of.

So you've set aside some cash for a rig, but still aren't looking to max out the credit card. No problem

It's that time again. You've had your trusty rig for a few years, and it's starting to show its age. It's time for an upgrade, but the parts that are now available make your older parts bottleneck, so you decide to spring for a new system.

We've been there.

For our Midrange build, we go for power at a moderate price. Granted, for PCs, a moderate price is much more than console gamers expect to pay. We set out to browse Newegg with a $1,500 budget to try for the best rig we could, with what we think is a solid price point that many would drop on a well-equipped laptop. After all, the "cheaper" 15-inch MacBook Pro comes in at $2,000. For that, we could get another GTX 980.

Our Midrange budget allows us to create a well-equipped build, but we can't go all-out with the choicest of components. We did make a compromise here and there, but the build still packs a lot of power for the dollar. Gamers should be able to play most games comfortably at 1440p, and can court 4K resolutions if a few effects are turned down.

Let's take a look at what we got from Newegg:

Prices reflect in-cart prices at time of procurement. Prices and availability are subject to change.

This is a solid build and was loads of fun to put together. Let's take a look at some of the details.

CPU

The reliable i7-4790K Devil's Canyon makes a comeback in our Midrange build, as its still the premier CPU for Z97 boards at this time. We like dancing with the devil when it comes to CPUs, since the sinful silicon delivers solidly powerful results. 

The quad-core CPU is unlocked, so you can squeeze even more performance out of it. Think of it as a "free" upgrade. While we kept this CPU at stock clocks for testing, this rig is primed for overclocking.

We paired this CPU with Corsair's powerful H100i GTX closed-loop cooler, allowing for stability in overclocks. The cooler fit snugly into the top of the mid-tower case, although the point where the tubing connects to the radiator intrudes on the to 5.25-inch drive bay. There are no worries, since we didn't bother adding a DVD drive. (A standard DVD drive runs about $20.) If you really want to add a drive to the bay, you'll have plenty of room if you use the second bay from the top.

While we love the Devil's Canyon, the upcoming release of Intel's Skylake line of CPUs may mark the end of its hellish reign.

GPU

When we put this build together, AMD's entries into the lower high-end realm of GPUs—the 300 series—had yet to be tested in our labs. We wanted to make sure that this GPU would hold its own for a while, and we went with the Nvidia's GTX 980.

The GTX 980 is a workhorse here at Maximum PC, and we have three of them in our new zero-point machine. With 4K gaming now a possibility in higher-end machines, the GTX 980 is the standard we measure other cards by.  

The downside to the 980 is its price compared to the similar GTX 970. The upside is that the 980 beats out the 970 in just about every benchmark, save power consumption. Those extra frames per second count when it comes to relative future-proofing. It's also worth noting that the GTX 980 scales well in SLI, and two of the cards will beat a single Titan X.

This implementation features a factory overclock, which ups the price a little more than a reference 980 would set you back, but offers more performance. Rest assured, if (and when) it comes time to upgrade your CPU and motherboard, chances are this card will be worth holding on to. Adding another one of these cards will also render a significant upgrade that will keep up with newer models.

Motherboard

The Gigabyte motherboard we chose feels like it's a smaller cousin to the X99 SOC Champion. This mobo has a lot of the same overclocking controls in the BIOS. 

We also chose this board for its inclusion of an M.2 port. Even though we didn't use it in this build, M.2 offers the option to add a screaming-fast SSD at the price of some SATA lanes. The board also features six USB 3.0 ports on the back panel, with the two USB 2.0 ports placed up by the PS/2 keyboard and mouse connector where they belong.

Everything Else

Going big with a GTX 980 comes at a price, and that price was storage capacity. We made sure to get a fast SSD from Kingston that had admirable sequential and random I/O speeds coupled with a capacity that allows room to play. We can say that an extra $100 for an extra SSD would be money well spent when pairing the SSDs in a RAID 0 or 1 setup. 

We also went with a relatively small (imagine that, a terabyte is small these days) 1TB spinning HDD. We could have gone with a cheaper Seagate drive, but the longevity and warranty backing Western Digital's drives let us justify the jump in price. Even then, the prices for the WD Black drives have gotten a little cheaper, making them a little closer to Seagate's offerings.

When we take a look at our RAM, we can see a relatively modest 8GB. While 8GB is plenty for most games and applications, grabbing another kit to fill out the DIMM slots with 16GB will give you plenty of memory for all those Chrome tabs.

We stuffed all of this gear into a black NZXT Phantom 240 case which is inexpensive, but big enough for everything we needed. We ended up removing the top drive cage for a little extra space and to improve air flow for our GPU.

Some may like the look of empty drive cages (who are you?), but some of us like to think that it makes a build look more cluttered. We tend to opt for cases with removable cages for this reason. That's not too big of a deal, since removable cages come pretty standard for all but the cheapest of chassis.

And finally, we're happy with the 750W power supply from EVGA that we chose, even if it's a bit more than what we needed. We tried to leave a little headroom so that adding another GTX 980 would be within the realm of possibility. We also liked the fact it came with a 10-year warranty. A decade is a long, long time for a PC, so we can sleep easy knowing that this PSU won't let us down.

Benchmarks

This rig performed pretty well, but was just shy of providing performance that we'd recommend for 4K gaming. It was poorly equipped when compared to our beast of a zero point, which uses a 5960X CPU, three GTX 980s, and 16GBs of RAM. However, it did provide a very sizable improvement over our Budget Gamer build. But hey, that's what an extra $430 in CPU and GPU power gets you.

With nearly twice the budget of the Budget gamer, we get big jumps in performance for our Midrange build. The Budget build couldn't touch the 4K benchmarks, while the Midrange nabs scores that put frame rates on the low-end of playability. 

In 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, the Midrange lands at nearly double the score of the Budget Gamer, while getting nearly double the frame rate in Batman at 1440p.

It is also worth noting that the Devil's Canyon beat the 5960X in the single-threaded timed benchmarks. More cores are better, but only in applications that can make use of them.

It feels like ages since we first heard about Tangiers back in 2013. I guess it has been ages. Andalusian Games describes it as (take a deep breath) "like Thief making out with Kentucky Route Zero, with a bit of Dear-Esther-On-Bath-Salts thrown into the mix". That's enough to get me interested, so it's good to hear the game will enter beta on September 3, ahead of its final release on November 26.

The trailer above makes an effort to set the scene, but it's a fascinatingly unfamiliar one. According to the studio you play as "an outsider" forced to stealthily navigate the murky city of Tangiers. It's an open sandbox, and in addition to sneaking around you'll also "use language as a weapon", though what that entails I'm not sure. It arrives on Steam and Itch.io in November.

This article was published in the August 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

An ultra-budget gaming PC for the shallowest of pockets

Length of Time: 1-3 Hours | Level of Difficulty: Medium

The Mission

One letter came in from retired army sergeant first class Harley Roam, who wrote in from Texas. (Texas?! Only steers and… ahem... came from Texas. Right, Sergeant Cowboy?)

Harley expressed that he s not one with deep pockets. Our typical builds tend to be in the $800 range or more, but Harley was wondering if we could build a PC for $300 to $500.

Challenge accepted, we thought. Couldn t be all that hard, now, could it? So, we set out scouring the web for parts on behalf of Harley. We found out that you can indeed build a PC that s sluggish and cheap, but we don t want that for Harley. We wanted to make sure he could actually play games on his rig. We also wanted to build a system that would have room for upgrades that aren t too expensive. The build we ended up with was just shy of $600, so we came out close-ish to our goal.

We did the best we could to make sure Harley could build a good rig for as little scratch as we could bear. After all, we ve all been in a spot where we weren t exactly flush with cash. So, pay attention, Harley, this build s for you!

Rally the Troops

Setting a budget of $500 puts severe restrictions on our choices of hardware, and ultimately, we weren t able to make it. There are some things we just weren t willing to compromise, namely 1080p gaming with at least 30fps with settings cranked up. This led us to pick the GeForce GTX 960 for the GPU. We went with an Asus STRIX because we found it for about $200. While that s a big chunk of budget, it will give a solid gaming experience in many games you re likely to encounter. Going with team green also means you ll have a better experience in Linux gaming, should you choose to go with the free OS. After all, including Windows 8 in a build means saying bye-bye to a Benjamin. If you re building an ultra-budget machine, it s unlikely you have too many of them to spare.

For a processor, we went with an AMD FX-6300, which was $100. Between the GPU and CPU, we thought this would give Harvey a good base to build upon. We dropped the CPU and GPU onto a Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P, which was about $60. We also dropped the idea of having an SSD or optical drive. The power supply is a little beefier than our needs called for, but we wanted to make sure the system could take an upgrade or two without hitting the upper limit of the PSU. The Enermax case we put everything into was surprisingly roomy for the build, and gave enough options for cable management and upgrades that meant we weren t left wanting.

1. Using Less Texas Tea

Corsair's CX500 isn t as sexy as its modular siblings, but it gets the job done for a reasonable price. Normally, a non-modular power supply means a rat s nest of unused cables. We kept things tidy with the help of the case s beveled side panel behind the mobo. A few zip and twisty ties kept the unused power cables out of the way.

The CX500 s meager (to us) output means it s small compared with the 1KW monsters you ll find in bigger systems. That s acceptable because our CPU and GPU aren t super demanding. The PSU is 80 Plus Bronze certified, which is a bare minimum when it comes to efficiency. If you do eventually upgrade to a bigger PSU, we prefer modular units to help keep things neat. Power cables are the largest cables in the case, and more of them makes maintaining good airflow and closing the right side panel a pain.

2. Take It at a Mosey Place

Nothing fancy to see here, folks—move along, move along. Our limited budget prohibited us from going crazy on cooling, so the stock heatsink and fan had to suffice. It wasn t so bad though; the FX-6300 stayed fairly cool with the stock parts. Even under load, it didn t feel like the processor was heating up the room. We didn t plan on overclocking the CPU, so excessive cooling wasn t warranted here. Using the stock heatsink and fan also saves you a bit of build time.

Of course, should you want to OC, we d recommend grabbing an aftermarket cooler. For air cooling, Cooler Master s Hyper 212 Evo is only $35.

3. A Simple Kind of Mobo

Gigabyte's 970A-DS3P is a $65 motherboard that has all the basics you need. That said, our choice of mobo was a compromise due to our budget constraints. One thing we noticed about this particular board is that the right side didn t extend all the way to the forward column of brass standoffs. This meant that plugging in the ATX power connector was a little more hairy, as the board flexed a bit under the pressure. That was easily overcome by pushing the underside of the board with the other hand, though. Still, it was a bit of a gotcha you should keep in mind if you go with this board.

The motherboard is one of the parts that we consider good enough for now, knowing that a user would probably want to upgrade it in the future. It s got all the basics, USB 3.0, and other standards like onboard FakeRAID. You can find good AMD 970 chipset boards for around $100, and 990 boards for a little more.

4. Take It Easy

One great thing about going with a stock heatsink and fan is that memory is a breeze to install. Click-click, bam! Done! For this build, we went with 1,866MHz G.Skill Ripjaws, which the motherboard took without need to overclock. We had to set the memory speed in the BIOS, but that s a relatively painless process. Eight gigabytes of memory is plenty for this build. Again, we weren t trying to go crazy. To stay within the ultrabudget range, we don t recommend going much higher in capacity or frequency.

The G.Skill Ripjaws aren t the cheapest DIMMs you can find, but they are relatively inexpensive, have decent timings, and will serve you well even if the CPU, motherboard, or other components are upgraded. While 1,600MHz memory is slightly cheaper, the 970 chipset and CPU support 1,866MHz without overclocking, so we figured: why not? If you have to squeeze every penny though, 1,600MHz memory is just dandy.

5. The Lone Hard Drive

This is a budget bill, so we had to omit use of an SSD in favor of a single spinning drive. The 1TB Seagate Barracuda looks kind of lonely all by itself, but that also means the drive will have plenty of room to dissipate any heat.

Building systems with spinning hard drives as the system drive is a bit antiquated. Compared with SSDs, waiting on big file transfers feels like going back to the stone ages. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—prices for spinning hard drives don t scale at the same rate capacity does. Where a 500GB SSD might cost the same as two 250GB models, a 1TB HDD is usually less expensive than two 500GB units. That price difference precluded us from using RAID as a strategy to obtain higher transfer rates. For that reason, we recommend upgrading to an SSD as soon as there s spare money to burn.

6. See the Sights

The videocard we chose is modest by many counts. Nevertheless, the GTX 960 can still produce playable frame rates at 1080p for a wide array of games. Don t think you ll be playing Grand Theft Auto V maxed out, but you can still get good-looking visuals for a pretty reasonable $200.

The Asus STRIX implementation of the GTX 960 is quite the compact card. The STRIX s size would pay off a lot more in a smaller, tighter system like an HTPC. But in the Enermax case, the card has plenty of room, making for a simple installation and power connection. The card is also inexpensive enough that buying another one down the road and using the two in SLI is a perfectly viable upgrade.

You ll have an easy time getting the card to work in Linux, as Nvidia s proprietary drivers are still the best performers on the open-source OS. So you ll be able to play BioShock: Infinite on Linux, should you go the way of the penguin.

1. It s rare that we leave a CPU with nothing more than a stock heatsink and fan, but we can get away with it since we re not overclocking.2. The lack of an optical drive is not a crime. You can find Linux install media on USB drives, and if you need a DVD drive for Windows 8, they run about $20.3. The 2.5-inch drive cage positioned above the 3.5-inch cage gives extra room for long graphics cards that otherwise wouldn t fit.4. The CX500 isn t modular, so you have to stuff the extra cables somewhere. The case s beveled side panels make this easier for rookies.

Wide-Open Spaces with Room to Grow

Low-balling on price isn t something we normally do here. We love our big $100 cases and $300 CPUs, but we get it that not everyone can afford to build in the $1,500 range.

At the same time, if we re going to compromise in the name of budget, there are some things we just aren t willing to skimp on. Even with a relatively modest $100 CPU, gaming relies heavily on GPU performance. Investing that $200 in a GPU will pay off in the long run, as other components are upgraded.

Building PCs is more than just performance, it s a hobby and passion for us. If money is tight, it s sometimes better to get a modest base and improve it all the time. That will make a story out of the continual work. Just as a project car can go from rust-bucket to show material, a computer can go from a budget build to a face-melting machine that bends space-time given enough time, blood, sweat, tears, and disposable income.

We wanted to create a solid base to build on. The case offers plenty of opportunities for expansion, and the GPU and CPU combo will get the system started in the right direction. While the build drags its ass for a number of reasons—namely, the modest CPU and a spinning hard drive for the OS—the six cores of the FX-6300 combine to get work done in multithreaded applications. Also, you should be able to play quite a few games at 1080p at modest settings with the GTX 960.

Transforming this build from modest to mighty can take any number of approaches with incremental improvements. An SSD will level-up your data-transfer speeds significantly, and is the best way to enhance the build. The boost in storage speed should be followed by a more robust motherboard with features like M.2 support. A mobo upgrade will present the choice to stay with the AM3+ socket or to switch over to an Intel board.

If you choose to stay with AM3+ and go with a better AMD CPU or overclock the FX-6300, investing in a closed-loop water cooler is ideal. Packing in more case fans will make life easier for overclockers, as well. With this case, there s plenty of room for a small cooler and extra fans. Going with Intel will cost you some extra coin, but will allow for a less aggressive cooling solution.

We enjoyed this challenge, even if we couldn t quite get it down to $500. Sorry about that, Harley, but we wanted to make sure you d have a better base machine for gaming and video. Prices do fluctuate, and we saw a few rebates that brought the build down by $40 $50. By the time you read this, maybe you ll be lucky enough to take advantage of a couple of deals and get started. Happy trails!

Our current zero-point consists of a hexa-core 3.2GHz Core i7-3930K (turbo 3.8GHz), 16GB of Corsair DDR3/1600, on an Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard. We are running a GeForce GTX 690, an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.

After only four months in Early Access, Warhammer 40,000: Regicide will release officially on August 26. The "Orks-versus-Space Marines game of chess" will launch with three acts and 50 missions, as well as tactical abilities not seen in the current Early Access build. According to the official announcement there's a bunch of other new stuff as well, including "many new tactical abilities, a full tier upgrade system for units, and a barrage of additional fan-requested features, refinements and improvements."

If you're already playing the Early Access edition, you'll probably know about the recent Update 1.3, which rolled out yesterday. It ushered in the first act of the campaign, a beta version of the Armoury, new abilities for both players and units, and a lot more. The lengthy notes can be found over at the Regicide Steam page.

If you like Warhammer but prefer something a bit less chess-like, here's ten minutes of the forthcoming Total War: Warhammer tie-in.

There will be a new Battlefield game in 2016, a spokesperson for publisher Electronic Arts has confirmed. Speaking during an investor's call (where all exciting video game announcements are hidden), EA CFO Blake Jorgensen confirmed the news.

"What we've said is that our intention over the next couple of years is to have a first-person shooter as one of the core titles," Jorgensen said (via IGN). "This year, obviously, it's Star Wars Battlefront. Next year, it's another Battlefield title."

It's interesting, especially in light of comments last year by EA's Patrick S derlund that the publisher had no plans to annualise the Battlefield series. A new Battlefield in 2016 doesn't necessarily mean that's the plan, but Battlefield: Hardline did release back in March. The latter was developed by Visceral Games, so it's likely the next Battlefield will be Battlefield 5, and developed by DICE.

Whatever the case, EA now has three major shooter series to its name: Battlefield, Battlefront and Titanfall. As for the latter, it's getting a free-to-play version in Asia later this year, and a mainline sequel is in development. 

Rocket League is basically soccer played by cars that can fly. It's so hot right now, and everyone who's anyone is playing it, as evidenced by these motivational tips from some of the greatest sports figures of all time. Now more is on the way: Developer Psyonix announced today that the first paid DLC release, Supersonic Fury, will be out in August, alongside a free update that will add a number of new features, including Spectator Mode.

The Supersonic Fury DLC will include two new cars, the American muscle car Dominus and the Japanese street racer Takumi, plus six new decals, five paint types—Brushed Metal, Carbon Fiber, Metallic Pearl, Pearlescent, and Wood—the Burnout and Nitrous 2 rocket boosts, two sets of new wheels, and new Steam achievements to collect. The free update, to be released on the same day, will enable the Spectator Mode for 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 matches (the studio said 4v4 is coming later) and add the new Utopia Coliseum, 3v3 Ranked Mode, more than 70 extra country flags, a bunch of "We're Sorry the Servers Were Borked At Launch" customization items, and a new Hollywood Principle single called "Firework." (You can hear a bit of it in the trailer above.)

"We're stunned, humbled, and grateful for the positive reception to Rocket League," Psyonix President Dave Hagewood said. "We want to keep a good thing going, and keeping our community happy with new content is very important to us. This is just the beginning!"

The Supersonic Fury DLC will be released sometime in August, and will sell for $4. Get the details on Steam.

Comcept USA, the team behind Mighty No. 9, launched a separate Kickstarter in early July for Red Ash: The Indelible Legend, a game/anime combo pack intended as a sort of spiritual successor to Mega Man Legends. It started strongly, raising well over $200,000 of its $800,000 goal in very short order, but just as quickly petered out, and with three days left it's stuck a little shy of the $500,000 mark. Today, however, the studio announced that the project "is a go for full development," and will even be ported to consoles.

How did this rapid turnaround happen? Comcept has actually been negotiating with "hardware makers and development partners" for a while now, and has settled on a deal with Fuze Entertainment, "a Chinese digital entertainment company engaged in production of console hardware as well as sales of console games."

"We can officially confirm that 'The KalKanon Incident' will be developed to completion, with the initial goals for game content (8 hours), along with ports to BOTH PlayStation 4 and Xbox One!" Comcept revealed on Kickstater. "The rights to Red Ash will be retained by comcept. We're excited to find such a great partner in Fuze who believes in our vision in its pure form. In addition, comcept will retain rights to creative discretion and decisions in game development."

Thanks to this announcement, we will be re-purposing the KS for stretch goals to make the game even better.

— RED ASH (@RedAshGame) July 30, 2015

It seems unlikely that the Kickstarter campaign will succeed, but it will continue to forge ahead, as Comcept said backers should consider their pledges "a contribution to stretch goals from here on out." It didn't reveal what those stretch goals are, however, saying only, "We're very busy with many behind-the-scenes things over here, and we apologize if you feel left in the dark." Potentially complicating the situation even further is how Comcept described Fuze's role as "join[ing] your ranks as backers," and while that could be simply a poor choice of words, it also implies that the Kickstarter is a success.

And in some ways it is. The game is being made, and going by the bulk of the comments following the announcement, that's all that most people care about. It's also possible that the Kickstarter will achieve its goal, and that the money raised will go toward stretch goals, as promised. But changing gears like this midway through a funding campaign and asking backers to keep throwing money at it while offering no indication as to what will actually be done with the cash feels a bit uncomfortable, doesn't it? The Red Ash Kickstarter runs until 2:30 pm EDT on August 3.