In the 1980s and 90s, the roleplay system Dungeons and Dragons was huge, and so were the spin-off video games set in the Forgotten Realms—titles like Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Hack and the awesomely-named Menzoberranzan. Why have you never played them? Because, like Planescape: Torment and Baldur s Gate, they ve spent twenty years lost in licensing hell. And Good Old Games has finally tracked them down.

For Good Old Games finding the missing games, establishing who owned which parts of them, and getting them into a playable state has taken many years. Their first step was to work out who owned what. After all, the original developers SSI disappeared into Mindscape in 1994, before being passed through The Learning Company, Mattel and Ubisoft—and this game was licensed from TSR, who closed in 1997.

As GOG s Oleg Klapovsky explained to us, with classic games like those from the Forgotten Realms series, years of mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies can really leave the rights sitting in very strange places... like banks, or enormous conglomerates. Sometimes the original documents aren't even digitized, so somebody has to physically head down to the figurative cellar and dig through countless cabinets. On top of that, the art, the music, the license, the digital distribution rights, the code can all be owned by different people.

So GOG went to SSI, and hence to Ubisoft, who were also the publisher of the first SSI game. After considerable back and forth, it unfortunately (though perhaps fortunately for us) turned out to be a dead end. says Klapovsky. The rights were not with Ubisoft. They were sold or left behind somewhere along the way.

Then GOG went to the next logical place, the current owners for D&D, Hasbro / Wizards of the Coast. While they did own The Forgotten Realms intellectual property and were very excited for what we're doing, they also had never gotten the actual games themselves. Another dead end.

With the trail running cold, GOG tracked down SSI s original President and founder, Joel Billings. As a huge fan of D&D he was willing to help walk us through a detailed history behind SSI mergers and narrow the search down to two potential candidates: Mattel, or Gores Technology Group (who had acquired The Learning Company). The latter was a hit. We had found the actual rights owners to the Forgotten Realms games, and after several more months of negotiations, they agreed to sell them to us outright.

GOG managed to recover thirteen games this way. They are: the party-based RPG Pool of Radiance; its sequels Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades and Pools of Darkness; C&C creators Westwood s minigame RPG Hillsfar; the RPG construction kit Unlimited Adventures; Westwood s first-person Eye of the Beholder Trilogy; the roguelike FPS Dungeon Hack; the two Savage Frontier games; and the Ultima Underworld-like Underdark exploration game Menzoberranzan.

Then it they had the not-so-small matter of getting all thirteen running and bug-free for modern systems including Windows 10. 

Then it they had the not-so-small matter of getting all thirteen running and bug-free for modern systems including Windows 10. Considering these were huge games—and not bug free in their release versions—that s a massive task that the GOG team has been working on since April.

One of the stranger challenges has been to get the Code Wheels working—the nostalgia-inducing cardboard security devices that came in the SSI Gold Boxes. We considered trying to remove the need to use these codes during gameplay (much like we've done with several of our games in the past) but instead decided to opt for leaving that mechanic intact for the sake of a cooler, more authentic old-school experience. So each game has a printable DIY code wheel for players to construct and a software version as well.

For the SSI team who created them, it s great that these games will get rediscovered by a new generation. After all, twenty years ago they put their heart and souls into them, as the lead designer David Shelley explains. SSI had bet its future on the franchise, bringing in their first artists, and creating a team much larger than the 2-3 man teams they usually had. Thankfully, the games did so well that, as one of the programmers said, we could have shipped pancakes in a D&D Gold box and made money.

Though it sounds ridiculous now, before these games came out it was thought that the computing power simply didn t exist to represent D&D accurately. As SSI programmer Keith Brors recalls, These games were extremely advanced for the time. The C64 and Apple II versions were written completely in 6502 assembly and those computers only had around 48,000 bytes of Ram. The computer I'm using here to answer these questions has 166,000 times as much memory. (Charmingly, Bror still works on D&D, as lead programmer on Neverwinter Online.)

Not that they were perfect games, by any means. Laura Bowen-Shelley was an artist at SSI; They do have a different feeling from modern games, less dark and not very grim even when they were violent. Less questioning of stereotypes, too. There seemed to be less at stake, and there was less judging and pointing of fingers. As a female, I felt a bit outside of the whole thing and not able to push back much, though I was a lot less embattled than seems to be the case with some women in gaming right now. No one was making threats when I said I preferred to draw a female authority figure with a strong jaw rather than a sexy pout.

We have seen the D&D torch passed on to great games like Baldur's Gate.

That said, all the team we spoke to seemed proud that these games are once again part of videogame history. We have seen the D&D torch passed on to great games like Baldur's Gate, and members of those teams have gone on to make some games in the same vein, such as Pillars of Eternity. said David Shelley. It does trade off turn based detail for realtime excitement, but the story and style hearkens back to many of the games in these collections. Divinity: Original Sin is another with an excellent fantasy feel, and a similar experience.

And though these games are all that s left of SSI, the team behind them has finally found the impetus to recreate their charms, as Shelley explains. Some of us decided that we should get together again and produce a new RPG which hearkens back to those great games. We helped found TSI, and are busy creating Seven Dragon Saga. Our six character parties, and turn based combat, are inspired by the work done on the D&D games.

When Larian Studios first announced it would be returning to Kickstarter for Divinity: Original Sin 2, there was an air of skepticism. The first Original Sin was a glowing Kickstarter success, and many wondered why the studio would need to return for more crowdfunding. However, after playing a pre-alpha build of Original Sin 2, I can't help but think that another Kickstarter success could help make it one of the most engaging RPGs to date.

We got a chance to sit down with Swen Vincke, the Creative Director and CEO of Larian Studios, and play a pre-alpha build of Divinity: Original Sin 2, which already has noticeably more ornate graphics and a few new systems—despite using a large amount of placeholder assets from the first game. The sequel will support up to four play co-op and have a competitive mode, available both in and out of the story mode. But the most impressive thing is the shear amount of choice you are given, and how every one of those choices fundamentally affects how your characters can proceed. 

Choosing a backstory is now part of the character creation process, and the history you choose will alter how your character can navigate the game's overarching plot. You may be the child or friend of a certain NPC, while one of your co-op partners is secretly on a mission to kill that same person. The interaction and conflict between every possible backstory and character choice is what will set Divinity: Original Sin 2 apart from its predecessor, and a successful Kickstarter could help ensure that by enlarging the list of possible options. 

You can watch the video above to hear Vincke talk about the game while playing it firsthand.

Here are some important moments in the video:

01:25 - Some of the new character models.05:57 - The new source skill system.13:58 - An example of how differently characters are treated based on their race/backstory/etc.22:38 - A very large source explosion.29:40 - How to trick your allies with poison (and some joking about pay2win).37:35 - Some "enhanced" interrogation techniques.44:52 - The new skill-crafting system.47:40 - A VERY LARGE (and sad) DRAGON.49:28 - Some inter-party betrayal.

And you can watch a full match of the competitive arena mode right here. The kickstarter is live now, and has attracted more than $100,000 already.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 officially launched its Kickstarter campaign today, which aims to increase the already dizzying amount of choice and variance in the game through crowd-funding. Along with a large host of improvements and changes to the first Original Sin, Larian Studios announced the sequel would be playable with up to four players and feature a competitive mode, accessible both in and out of the story mode. 

I got a chance to play a pre-alpha build of Divinity: Original Sin 2 head-to-head against Larian's Creative Director and CEO, Swen Vincke. It was a rather intimidating affair playing against the man who founded Larian, but I put 80 hours into the first Original Sin and was ready to put up a fight. We each took control of two members of our four character party and jumped into a dungeon-themed arena—packed with neutral NPC skeletons and a valuable chest in the center of the battlefield. You can watch the video above to see exactly how it went from there.

The fight played out like any other might; we each took our turns trying to out-maneuver our opponent's and the plentiful elemental hazards around the map. But this was the first time I'd ever fought another living person with Original Sin's finely tuned RPG systems, and I found myself no longer able to rely on the enemy making predictable mistakes. The skeletons were still AI-controlled (and caused a large amount of chaos during the battle) but I could only win when my opponent's characters were dead, not by killing more skeletons than him. 

Vincke mentions in the video above that this isn't the only arena level available, even saying they've been internally testing a "Gauntlet"-style competitive dungeon crawl. Divinty: Original Sin 2 will also have a editor available, meaning players can make their own arenas to compete against each other in. It probably won't be what the majority of players spend their time on, but competitive multiplayer in the Divinity engine has got me very excited.

You can watch our longer playthrough of the Divinity: Original Sin 2 pre-alpha with Vincke right here.

Once, the early Fallout RPGs were available on GOG. Then Bethesda and Interplay had a big fight, and Bethesda gained full rights to the Fallout series. Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics all promptly disappeared from GOG and Steam, and then—months later—returned to Steam only. That was it for the epic saga of The Company Who Owned A Thing. Until today.

GOG and Bethesda have finally struck a deal, and the Fallout games are back in DRM-free form on the distribution service. Also, GOG is now selling a number of other Bethesda-owned classics—all DRM free. Two of these new old games are being made available digitally for the very first time.

Here's what's now available:

• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
• The Elder Scrolls: Battlespire
• Quake (includes Mission Pack 1 and Mission Pack 2)
• The Ultimate DOOM
• DOOM II + Master Levels for DOOM II + Final DOOM
• Fallout
• Fallout 2
• Fallout Tactic

A number of deals are also available throughout the next week. Purchase all three Elder Scrolls games, and you'll get a 33% discount. Purchase all three Id games, and you'll get a 33% discount. Purchase all three Fallout games, and you'll get a 66% discount. Finally, purchase any of the above games and you'll get The Elder Scrolls: Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for free.

A few feet from where I sit, a wizard is making things explode from chained beams of lightning and fire. It can only mean that the new Diablo 3 patch is out—thus re-triggering Tom Senior's compulsive need to explode things with a wizard.

Below, you'll find Blizzard's video round-up of patch 2.3.0's major features and changes.

The two biggest additions are the new Adventure Mode zone—the Ruins of Sescheron—and Kanai's Cube. The Ruins contain new traps, new enemies and, should you care, new Barbarian lore. They also contain the cube—Diablo 3's version of the Horadric Cube. Its recipes will allow you to customise items; extracting legendary powers, reforging items, converting sets and more.

There's also a bunch of other changes. You can see the full patch notes here.

It's been about a year since we last checked in with Hard West—back when it was running an ultimately successful Kickstarter campaign. Let's do so again, and... oh, would you look at that. It's robbing a bank. They grow up so fast.

In the video below, you can watch as Hard West producer Pawel Kroenke runs through the game's Aspirton Bank Robbery mission.

Cover icons? Movement zones? Standing completely still while a person moves up next to you and shoots you in the face? It sure is a tactical turn-based XCOM-a-like. It also looks pretty good. I like that a lot of the hassle seen in the above playthrough could have been avoided by taking out the telegraph.

Hard West is due out this Autumn.

Big features, small footprint

Over the last several weeks, we ve taken a good look at a couple of network attached storage (NAS) solutions including the beastly Synology Diskstation DS2515+ NAS and the smaller eight-bay QNAP TVS-871 NAS. Now we re taking a hard look at the four-bay QNAP TurboNAS TS-451, which isn t as large as the former two we reviewed, but still packs a punch in regard to features and performance.

We re not going to beat around the bush here: This QNAP NAS is simply awesome. The device is perfect for the home and could be used as a theater PC despite some of the hardware shortcomings. That s because this NAS supports not only HDMI output to a monitor or HDTV, but you can plug a mouse and keyboard into the built-in USB ports for a full desktop experience. You can t play games on the device, but you can certainly surf the web using Chrome or Firefox, both of which are apps that can be installed.

Its squarish form factor measures 6.97(H) x 7.09(W) x 9.25(D) inches, and includes an Intel Celeron dual-core processor (2.41GHz, 2.58GHz Burst), 1GB of DDR3L RAM (expandable up to 8GB), 512MB of internal storage, four drive bays, two gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB 3.0 ports (one front, one rear), and two USB 2.0 ports (both on the rear). The USB ports can support a USB printer, pen drive, a USB UPS, and more.

On the front of the NAS are LED indicators for Status, LAN, and the four hard drives. There are also an IR receiver, the power button, and a one-touch copy button. On the back are a single large fan keeping the innards cool, a password and network settings reset button, the power connector, and a Kensington security lock. So, despite the small form factor, there s a lot going on in the TS-451.

The TS-451 provides two interfaces powered by QNAP s QTS operating system. There s the back end, which is accessible through any web browser, and a front end that presents a number of services through the HDMI port. For the front end, there s a link to the QTS platform that basically loads up the back end interface without having to access a browser.

There are a number of apps that come preinstalled, including the Photo Station, the Music Station, the Video Station, the File Station, and more. Customers can get additional apps on QNAP s built-in App Center, which plays host to a large number of apps that are compatible with this particular NAS. While the App Center is nowhere as large as Apple s or Google Play's offerings, the QTS operating system provides three screens (or pages) for apps, just like a tablet or smartphone.

Some of the installed apps should speak for themselves, such as the Music Station and Photo Station. The files we uploaded were through the File Station, to keep everything neat and organized via folders. By default, media files are crammed into the Multimedia file folder; other folders include Download, Public, Recordings, and Web. The QTS platform recognizes the file extensions and will provide access to these files accordingly, such as JPGs can be viewed in the Photo Station, MOV files can be played in the Video Station, and so on.

The QTS back end also provides a neat and tidy Control Panel that's broken down into four sections: System settings, Privilege settings, Network services, and Applications. The System settings portion provides access to the general settings, storage manager, the network settings, notifications, and so on. The Privilege Settings provides access to user accounts, shared folders, domain security, and more.

The Network settings within the Control Panel app provides a number of features including FTP, Telnet / SSH, SNMP and Service Discovery. Meanwhile, users can access the Applications section to manage the iTunes server, the DLNA Media Server, the SQL server, the Web server, Antivirus, and loads more. As we previously stated, there is a lot of bang for the buck with this NAS.

One of the great aspects of the TS-451 is that you can access the stored files from anywhere, as long as myQNAPcloud is registered and activated. To connect to the device, users can simply open a browser and type www.myqnapcloud.com/cloudlink/yournasname where the yournasname is the name for the NAS taht you provided during setup. By having remote access, users can upload pictures and other files to the device on the fly, whether they re on vacation or at the mall.

For more savvy users, you can setup the TS-451 to a DynDNS service and configure your router to allow remote access that way.

The TS-451 also provides QSync, an app that synchronizes files on a device with files stored on the NAS. There s also the interesting Notes Station, which allows users to edit documents, spreadsheets, and slides that were created in Microsoft Office. There s even the ability to stream media to a smartphone or tablet, a built-in antivirus service, and a surveillance station for customers with cameras installed in their home or office.

The front end of the TS-451 is controlled by the HybridDesk Station. Here, users can install applications that will only be accessible through the front end, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Facebook, LibreOffice, Plex Home Theater, Skype, Spotify, TuneInRadio, and a few others. Also available on the front end are QNAP s native applications, such as File Station, Music Station, Photo Station, and Video Station.

Although we believe that the TS-451 is an awesome machine, the main QTS apps are a little weird to use. As we previously said, files were uploaded to the NAS via the Files Station app in order to keep all files organized whether they re pictures or music. You can upload pictures into a specific folder and access them without much trouble, and you can also convert these folders into albums. Want to share them on a social network? Just right-click and choose either Picasa, Flickr, or Weibo.

So, what's weird about the native QTS apps? Let s take Photo Station as an example. The left-hand menu provides the following: Shared Photos, Folder, Private Collection, Qsync, Album, Smart Album, Shared Center, Recent, and Trash Can. Having both a folder and an album is a little confusing, which is why we took the File Station route. Albums can be shared with other NAS users and the public, which seems to mean only those that can access the login screen can see the album. Folders can also be converted into albums.

For this review, we were provided with four Seagate (ST4000VN000-1H4168 SC46) hard drives with 3.64TB of usable space each, offering around 10.82 TB of overall storage. Users can keep track of each hard drive by going into the Control Panel app and clicking the Storage Manager icon. Here, you can receive data regarding each drive, cache acceleration, iSCSI, and Virtual Disk settings.

There s also a handy dashboard that you can access by clicking the speedometer icon in the top-right corner of the main screen. You can get a quick shot of the overall system health, various info about the hardware (system temp, fan RPM), the resource monitor, hard disk health, and the amount of storage that s available. QNAP even pulls in its news feed, such as firmware and utility launches.

According to QNAP, the TS-451 has a write speed of up to 82MB/s and a read speed of up to 126MB/s (AES-256 volume encryption throughput). These speeds were measured on a client machine consisting of Windows 8.1 Pro, an Intel Core i7-4790, and 16GB of DDR3 1,600Hz memory. We tested the RAID 5 write speeds using a rig with 8GB of RAM, an Intel Core i7-4790K clocked at 4GHz, Windows 10 Pro, and a 500GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD. We didn t perform additional speed tests because the NAS and test rig are on a 1Gbit network. The result, according to robocopy, was write speeds of around 107MB/sec. Read was the same.

The performance numbers highlights the ceiling for 1Gbit/sec Ethernet speeds, which by most accounts is more than enough for the purpose of the TS-451.

Wrap-up

All in all, QNAP s TS-451 is a great solution for homes and small offices that need more than just a disk backup. The device works well as a home media server, a backup center, a tool for file sharing, and so on. QNAP also has a number of apps on Google Play and Apple s App Store that expand the experience to phones and tablets. These include Qfile for managing files, Qmanager for controlling the NAS from a remote location, Qvideo for watching stored videos, Qmusic for streaming music, and so on.

One thing that we wish QNAP had done was to make the native app usage a little more clear out of the box, as it may be a bit confusing for those who are just now buying into the need for a NAS (present company included). Even though the specs guarantee that Crysis will absolutely not run on this system, you could still use it as a small media PC for watching movies and TV shows and surfing the internet.

There s definitely a lot of bang for the buck here, enough so that there are still many aspects about the box that this review didn t tap. The only real downside to this box of goodies is that it doesn t come cheap: It's right around $450 without the installed hard drives. Still, there are a lot of services under the hood that we think make it worth the outlay.

Build your next PC like a pro

We all know that PC stands for personal computer, and the best way for it to be truly personal is to actually build it yourself. This is the ideal route for those of us who want to choose and optimize each of the components, so that the rig is designed to perform its best, given budget constraints. You might think of it in terms of a restaurant s offerings: While the early-bird special might satisfy some people, for the real devotees, the only way is to go is la carte to have full control of all the courses.

There are plenty of guides to point out the essentials of building a new computer, but here we ll go beyond the basics, to showcase the secrets of the pros. While you might take a course in high school or college to learn the basics, to go beyond that entry level, there are graduate seminars that go into the advanced level of knowledge—consider this a master class.

Planning the Build

While anyone can screw together a system from a collection of computer parts purchased as part of a barebones special from a retailer, this will likely produce a mediocre system at best. Rather, a really great PC requires thoughtful planning of each component. For a system focused on gaming, the focus needs to be on the GPU first, for example. However, for a system designed for video-editing duties, the system should be designed around the CPU and the large amount of RAM that is required for a multithreaded workload.

After the basics of the system are sketched out, including the CPU, GPU, motherboard, and RAM, it s the time to check for compatibility between parts. One way to check the CPU and RAM compatibility is by looking at the manual for the motherboard, which will list its approved parts. This can be done before purchase by looking for the PDF of the manual from the manufacturer s website. This information can then be confirmed by using an online builder, such as PC Part Picker. This useful website allows a collection of parts to be entered, and shows what options for compatible parts are available for a given motherboard, along with prices from actual retailers to get the most bang for the buck. This also serves to give an estimate of wattage for the power supply required to run the rig. This wattage estimate should be confirmed with a second online tool, but avoid the ones from manufacturers (which tend to be biased toward larger PSUs) and use an independent one such as Power Supply Calculator. It is also a good rule of thumb to buy a little more power supply than is needed, as this will allow for future expansion of the system and help with system stability, although an overpowered PSU is inefficient and more expensive.

Tool Selection

From left to right: a Phillips head screwdriver, a claw pick-up tool with a grabbed screw, and a 1/4-inch nut driver.

To get any job done well and smoothly, the right tools are essential. For a PC build, a full set of both slotted and Phillips head screwdrivers are a must; name-brand tools are recommended as the cheap ones slip and strip screws. For smaller screws, micro screwdrivers are useful, and the shorter length facilitates them getting into tight spots. For a screw that also has hex on it (as are used on cases), a nut driver has the advantage over a screwdriver of grabbing the fastener and not stripping it as screwdrivers tend to do.

For grabbing things, needle-nose pliers can be your best friend as they can securely grab a wide variety of objects. For screws and other tiny parts that get dropped into the darkest corners of the case, a claw pick-up tool can retrieve the lost items with ease.

Static Electricity

Static electricity happens when electrical charge builds up on a material s surface. We ve all experienced this phenomenon when we shuffle across a carpeted floor in the winter, touch the doorknob, and get zapped. While this can be annoying when opening the door, when building a computer, this transfer of static charge has the potential to damage sensitive electronic components. This is further magnified with a computer being built that is not plugged into an outlet and therefore not grounded.

The textbook answer is to wear an anti-static wrist band. This clips from the wrist to the metal case, and prevents the electrical charge from getting built up. That said, with some common sense, the wrist guard is not truly necessary. While they are commonly discussed, most builders we know have never used one. Understanding the problem, we simply don t do our builds on a carpeted floor. In addition, touching another metal object such as a pipe before touching any of the sensitive parts will discharge any static buildup. Finally, keep parts in the their antistatic bags before they re ready to be installed. That s really all there is to it. Now you can put your anti-static wrist guard next your tinfoil hat!

Cable Routing

A Velcro cable tie can easily and reversibly secure several wires at the same time. They also come in a variety of colors to match your installation.

An easy way to differentiate a well-built rig from an amateur build is to look at how the cables are routed and secured in the case. Some mainstream manufacturers pretty much just throw the parts in the chassis, make the necessary connections, and pay no attention to routing cables. With all the connections that are necessary inside a rig, a robust system can have lots of wires to route.

Routing cables and securing them can be as much of an art form as a science. While this is an essential skill for a case build with a Plexiglas window (if you don t want to embarrass yourself when others peek in), there are benefits even when the cable routing is not normally visible. Some of the advantages include the cables not interfering with the airflow through the case (theoretically leading to lower temps), and having all the wires far away from the fans so the two don t get into a tangle.

For starters, let s look at cable length. It should be long enough to follow the desired route, but not so excessively long that the excess creates a problem. Cables come in a variety of lengths for exactly this reason, and choosing the correct one is important. In the case of cables that are too short, extension cables are available for power and SATA, or you can opt to simply buy a longer cable. Also, SATA cables are available with a right-angle connector; there are many instances where it may be the better fit than the straight-on approach.

There are a variety of options for ways to secure a cable to the case, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages—there is no one best option for all situations. With a custom build, using a variety as dictated by the situation is the mark of a pro builder.

Some cases have prebuilt pathways to hold cables. If these integrated retainers are there, we find it best to use them.. Depending on how secure the cable is within the pathway, an additional device can be used as well.

One affordable option is to secure the cable with electrical tape. While this is simple, the disadvantage is that it may not be easy to undo, and if it has to be cut, has the potential to damage the cable underneath.

Another popular option is zip ties. They come in a variety of colors and lengths, and are quite versatile. While the advantage is that they are very secure, the disadvantages are that they are single-use, and when tightened too tightly can notch and damage the cables underneath. It is generally good practice to trim the excess length of a zip tie after it has been secured. Also, be aware that there are reusable zip ties on the market, although they cost more initially and are not as widely available.

Finally, we really like self-attaching Velcro cable ties, which address many of the shortcomings of the other options. The advantages include reusability, and as they are wider, they re less likely to damage the cables underneath. They also do not need to be trimmed as any excess can just be wound around so that it does not stick out. Their only real shortcoming is that they cost more initially, although as they will last for years and across several builds, they re a good investment.

Drive Installation

An example of a white felt disc used to quiet a buzzy small form factor case.

Storage drives are designed to fit securely into their metal drive cages. Unfortunately, a hard drive made principally of metal, combined with a metal drive cage, combined with the case's cooling fans, and the rotating platters of a mechanical drive becomes a situation of too many moving parts, and can end in an annoying buzz every time the platters of the hard drive spin up. We ve had systems where the mechanical noises of the hard drive were literally getting amplified by the case.

While some drivers may prefer the sound of a throaty V-8 of a muscle car, nobody really wants to listen to their hard drive spin up and down. While the problem is less of an issue these days with an increasing prevalence of SSDs for main system drives, most rigs still need a mechanical drive for the serious storage until multi-terabyte SSDs become affordable. Thankfully, this is a fixable problem.

It really comes down to stabilizing the mechanical hard drive in the drive cage. The first step is to have the drive fastened with screws at multiple points. Occasionally, for whatever reason, the predrilled holes in the drive cage don t match up to those in the drive. If you re up for it, additional holes can be drilled in the metal so that there are two screws on each side. The screws should be snug, but don t overdo it and strip them. If the screws repeatedly loosen up, clear nail polish can be used on the threads before installation so the screw stays secure in its intended spot.

After the screw situation is sorted out, the other key step is to install the drive with some cushioning. The goal here is to avoid metal against metal, so that every vibration of the drive is not transmitted to the drive cage and metal case. There are some simple options that can accomplish this. Those felt dots that are sold in art supply stores work nicely. While designed to cushion moving parts in furniture, they are just thick enough to fill the gap between the drive and the enclosure. They also are self-adhesive, so they can be positioned on the drive, and this prevents them from moving as the drive is installed. A similar solution to the felt pads are self-adhesive non-skid foam pads. They re used in the same way as the felt dots, but the foam provides even more cushioning than the felt and also compresses better. The foam can also be found in strips, rather than having to use multiple pads.

The foam and felt pads can also be used to silence other case sounds that occur where metal meets metal, such as when the cover of a case doesn t fit precisely on the underlying frame of the case.

Thermal Paste

Thermal paste, the goopy stuff that sits between the top of the CPU and the cooler, quickly becomes one of the most controversial parts of a system. While with a prebuilt system you get whatever Dell or HP is able to purchase by the economical fifty-five gallon drum, for a home-built system we get to choose this important substance ourselves. Filling the microscopic gaps between the top of the CPU and the cooler, thermal paste is crucial in keeping the CPU cool; it enhances the transfer of heat off the CPU to the cooler, which then dissipates it.

Amateurs worry about how much paste to apply—the rookie error is to apply way too much. The simple answer is just enough, but not too much. This is not a case of more is better; too thick a layer of the paste acts as an insulator to the heat, which is the opposite of what needs to occur. If it s gooshing out the side, then too much was applied. Estimates of how much to place generally talk about a grain of rice. The goal is to have the entire surface of the CPU covered with a thin layer of the thermal paste, and definitely no more. In terms of the choice of thermal paste, Arctic Silver 5 is a favorite.

In cases where the CPU or thermal paste needs to be reapplied, the existing thermal paste should be removed. While there are commercial kits for this, isopropyl alcohol works well. It s available in pharmacies, and evaporates quickly. We ll spare you the pain of a college Organic Chemistry class, and summarize that isopropyl alcohol in the 70 percent strength is a safe balance of solvent and rapid evaporation, leaving no residue. It is also quite affordable compared to commercial thermal paste remover.

Bits & Bytes

Here are a few remaining tidbits to keep in mind:

That CD-ROM that ships with your motherboard has the drivers. However, while it is good to have for situations where you lose your internet access, the drivers are very likely to be out of date. Be sure to go to the manufacturer s website to download the latest ones. 

Installing RAM in a motherboard is not intuitively obvious, particularly in boards with several slots. In order to take advantage of all the RAM, especially in dual-channel configuration, or when using a single RAM stick, installation in the correct slots is key. The motherboard manual will contain the information on what order to populate the RAM slots, and it is important to follow it.

Finally, with a new system build, remember that a new copy of Windows is required (Unless you want to go Linux, which is fine). With Windows 7 support to end in 2020, and Windows 8/8.1 offering no advantage over Windows 10 these days, most new builds should use Windows 10 as an OS. Also, to use four or more GB of RAM, a 64 bit version of the OS is required.

Keeping in mind these techniques, even a novice can produce a well-designed and -assembled PC. Time to get planning and take your build to the next level!

We don't know whether aliens exist or not but we sure do like shooting them in video games. Rogue Continuum is in keeping with this tradition, a co-op roguelike dungeon crawler (or space crawler, or planet crawler) about "borderline psychopaths" mowing down hordes of brightly-coloured extraterrestrial life on far off planets (probably planets belonging to the extraterrestrials, because you know, humans are terrible). 

Steam is not lacking in games with a roguelike twist, and like a lot of other 'lighter' roguelikes Rogue Continuum features a persistent progression system, lending some permanence to the stat and weapon upgrades you'll find in-game. Never fear though, because death takes you back to the beginning of the game. The video below shows a co-op shooter vaguely reminiscent of a top down Mercenary Kings or Borderlands. It hits Early Access next month, and releases proper in 2016.

Twitch is still trying to complete Dark Souls, and it's making surprisingly good progress. That's thanks to a new 20-30 second delay after each player-instigated action, allowing the Twitch hivemind to coordinate moves in advance. When I said Twitch Plays Dark Souls could never win, that was before this new system was introduced. Now I'm pretty optimistic.

As the video above demonstrates, the system works well enough to allow the slaughter of the Taurus Demon the second major boss in the game (for most players, anyway). The video is edited to remove instances of pausing, but is pretty interesting in the way it makes the game look... kinda easy? 

I can't think of any major roadblocks for the playthrough until it reaches Anor Londo. How's it gonna handle those snipers? Or Ornstein and Smough? I can't wait to find out.