In the world of the tech-lusting enthusiast, there's never a shortage of stuff you can long for. When you splurge on one piece of gear, you just can't help but want another. So, what's got my juices flowing this week? Check it out.

The Phantom

I consider myself quite an audio nut. I don't know if I would outright say that I'm an audiophile but I do appreciate quality audio equipment, and my ears know when I'm listening to quality hardware. Then there's the snake-oil issue. Things like $3,500 USB cables, with outrageous claims and even more unbelievable "reviews" about them. Thankfully, I don't fall in the gullible category. Things for me have to be a bit more... reasonable.

Which is why there's something to be said for the possibility of replacing a sound setup that could run you over $10,000 with something much less expensive that produces much more.

The company is a bit obscure in the mainstream, but in the high-end audio world, Devialet is well known. Based in France, it has a knack for quite literally changing perceived notions of what audio components should be. Which is why when Devialet announced the Phantom speaker, it literally pulled the rug out from under the audio world.

The Phantom is unlike any other speaker system ever made. It's a hermetically sealed system that looks something straight out of a sci-fi movie. The unit weighs roughly 26 pounds and delivers what Devialet calls "implosive sound." What does that mean?

The structure of the Phantom is extremely rigid. There are two low-frequency "drivers" that flank the sides of the giant pill, but I wouldn't even call them drivers in the traditional sense. The bass modules contain negative pressure within the driver enclosure to "pull" back the drivers, which require quite of bit of power to operate. The negative pressure improves the movement response of the drivers significantly, allowing them to oscillate extremely fast, and extremely precisely. This enables the Phantom to deliver incredibly tight bass. The Phantom will respond, with pleasure, down to 16Hz, which is lower than your typical subwoofer can ever dream of going.

The base Phantom delivers 750 watts RMS power at 99 dB, and the Silver Phantom makes you truly feel its nuclear-like performance with 3,000 watts at 105 dB. In case you were wondering, this is loud. And when playing loud, the Phantom, thanks to its technology, produces no perceivable distortion.

There's a lot of pseudo science, snake oil, and marketing in the audio world. The Phantom, though, is entirely based on real science and engineering, which makes me appreciate what it can do even more. If you have a hi-fi store somewhere near where you live and they have the Phantom available for demo, go check it out.

So what can I do with the Phantom that I can't do now?

Well, I could replace obscene amounts of audio equipment that cost ridiculous amounts of money with a Phantom. For movies, though, the Phantom has lag, so until Devialet improves this with an update, the Phantom is more suited to just music. The base Phantom costs $1,990, which is very reasonable for what it's capable of and what it sounds like. For true stereo operation, you'll have to get two Phantoms and  use Devialet's Dialog module, but trust me when I say just one will give you immense audio jollies. I won't go into details about its incredible sound here though--you'll just have to listen to one for yourself. I'd go out on a limb, though, and say that anyone who's ever listened to a Phantom walked away with a Joker-like grin on their face. 

Mother of motherboards

Motherboards these days are commodity products. There are so many to choose from, and every manufacturer is slapping on every feature they can think of. Everything from "premium audio" DACs to RGB lighting. I suppose in a market so packed with offerings, you have to differentiate yourself somehow.

Which is why my favorite motherboard is ASUS's X99 E-WS. Those who have used ASUS's WS line know that this is a no-nonsense line of motherboards. There are no run-of-the-mill components here, just pure quality and a raw focus on stability.

The X99 E-WS from ASUS is one such board. Just one look at it tells you that this mobo means serious business. It's weird to call a motherboard beautiful, but that's what I would call the X99 E-WS. There's no fancy blocky heatsinks, just ones that really work. There's no RGB lighting, just components that keep on beating during the most stressful situations.

ASUS tests and validates its WS series rigorously. There are a lot of extra steps taken with this series to ensure that a system is always running at peak performance and stability. We hope to get one in for a detailed look.

So what can I do with the ASUS X99 E-WS that I can't do already? 

Right now, I use the X99 M-WS from ASUS, which is the micro-ATX version of the same board. It's small and works well for me. But if I wanted to do, say, triple-SLI, I'd have to go for the E-WS. It has seven x16 slots, four of which are full x16. The rest are x8 slots. The X99 E-WS also has 8 DIMM slots instead of the 4 on my M-WS, which would allow me to go up to a mind numbing 128GB of RAM. M.2 NVMe support? Check. Ten rear USB 3.0 ports? Check. And you even get dual Intel 1GbE ports, not the Realtek stuff.

DDR4 Domination

What goes perfectly with the ASUS X99 E-WS? My pick would be Corsair's Dominator Platinum DDR4 2800MHz DIMMs. I've always been a big fan of memory modules from Corsair. In the recent years, I've used modules from Kingston's HyperX line, which are fantastic, as well as Samsung's legendary "green" DDR3 ultra low-profile sticks, but I'm leaning now toward the Dominator Platinums because well, they just look so good.

Besides using high-quality chips, the Doms are very well made and go well with essentially any motherboard. Crafty modders have taken it upon themselves to remove the metallic head-piece from the Dominators and re-anodized them in other fantastic colors. For me, I'll stick with the silver as it works really well with the X99 E-WS. Perhaps gunmetal would be nice, too. Corsair: hint!

Critical specs include:

• MP 2.0 support
• 2800MHz
• 14-16-16-31

What can I do with the Corsair Dominator Platinums that I can't do now?

Maximum PC used these modules in our Dream Machine 2015, which says a lot about our confidence in Corsair's memory. For me, I'd go for the full 128GB kit. Unfortunately, that means it's going to be pricey. How much? You can snatch up the 128GB pack from Corsair for an eye-watering $1,265.

That 128GB pack can't really help me do anything more than I am doing right now, to be honest. I already have 64GB of RAM. Although I do use up a good chunk of that reserve, I highly doubt I'll need 128GB anytime soon. But honestly, excess is sometimes just simply fun.

Bonus: Acoustic Room Treatment

Circling back to audio nirvana, there's one thing every serious audio monitor user should have in their room: acoustic room treatment. Room acoustics heavily impact what you actually hear. If you're in an untreated room and feel like you're listening to accurate audio, think again. Reflections, flutter, and room resonance all play a part in coloring what your ears hear. To get accurate audio, you'll want to treat your room.

We find that a lot of home studios only go with foam absorbers. While this is typically a decent start, it's a long way from creating an ideal listening environment. You'll want to use phase-coherent diffusers along with absorbers, or products that do both.

If you want to start on this path, there's no better place to look than Acoustic Surfaces. The company makes amazing acoustic treatment products for professional studios, theater, and auditorium installations.

What can acoustic room treatment do for me that I don't have now?

Better audio, basically. Again, you'll want to use a combination of absorbers and diffusers. If you want to go all out and you have the space, installing ceiling panels (called clouds) and bass traps in your corners will improve your audio experience further.

Acoustic Surfaces also has a full range of other acoustic treatment products. If you have equipment in your studio or room that produces fan noise, you'll find the company's echo eliminator pads a revelation. I have a rack of servers in my studio and was desperate to silence them, and moving them out of the room wasn't an option. Installing the pads was super easy by way of a couple of 3M Command double-sided mounting stickers, and the results have been really impressive. I was skeptical at first of the difference I would hear, but now I'm a true believer.

I'll cover more about acoustic room treatment in an upcoming feature story.

Far Cry Primal has the potential to be legitimately interesting. It's definitely a Far Cry game, as we declared in our hands-on earlier this month, but it's set in the Mesolithic era, so you'll be playing as a primitive human hunter—a caveman, basically—armed with rocks, clubs, bows, and a pseudo-magical ability to tame and command animals. It also means that your motivations for killing will be different than in previous games in the series. As Creative Director Jean-Cristophe Guyot said in a recent developer's blog, It's not war, but survival.

Throughout the story, we give you good reasons why they re here and why they re dangerous to you, but we don t want them to feel like stupid guards," he explained. "So they have a life. We try to create a culture and religion for every type of tribe, and at some of the outposts, they re actually playing music, fishing and doing other tasks.

It sounds almost like a kinder, gentler Far Cry, unfettered by the plagues of politics, greed, criminality, and insanity. But the ESRB descriptor suggests that the game will in fact get pretty raw, as Kotaku put it, and I don't think they're wrong. I'll let the relevant bit speak for itself.

One cutscene depicts a character being held in a fire while screaming; another depicts Takkar tapping a hole in another character's skull as the man screams. Some scenes depict corpses in various states of mutilation: heads and torsos on spikes; ears cut off and kept as trophies; headless bodies lying in pools of blood. Certain scenes or camera angles can depict male genitalia under garments or in shadows; some female characters are depicted topless. A handful of scenes depict characters engaged in sexual activity while clothed; grunts and short moans can be heard, though no explicit details are seen.

That last bit about the absence of explicit sex is probably why, despite the incineration, trepanation, mutilation, and decapitation—on top of the run-of-the-mill murder and mayhem—Far Cry Primal has been rated M. It comes out on March 1.

I was out late doing last-minute Christmas shopping when I stumbled across a tiny little store I'd never seen before, nestled in an alley between a Wal-Mart and a check-cashing place. The shop was called "Curios, Rarities, Bibelots & Old Sci-Fi Magazines That Inspired Games From 2015". Strange name for a store, but I decided to stop in, if only to warm my hands for a moment. It was a chilly night filled with snow and wind and maybe, just maybe, a little magic.

The shopkeeper was odd, with a vacant stare and questionable facial animations. "Looking to shop? I'm sure I have something you'd be interested in," he said. "I guess I've got a few minutes to browse," I replied. "Take a look at what I've got," he said, showing me his entire inventory, sortable by category. Strange thing was, after I paused my browsing to reply to a text, we had the exact same conversation again when I resumed looking through his offerings.

This may sound unbelievable, but did you know that a number of the games released in 2015 were based on stories from old pulp science fiction magazines? It almost sounds like I'm making the entire thing up just to pad our website with content while we're on vacation, right? But I have proof. Just take a look at some scanned pages from an old issue of Thrilling Tales of Wonder From the Radio Planet. It was published in 1933, and it contained a story called Fallout 4. After reading it, It's hard to believe Bethesda didn't draw a lot of inspiration from the story within.

Weird, right? That definitely feels like it was used as source material for the game. A little later on, we get to see some combat and a return to Sanctuary, which the Sole Survivor had begun to turn into a bustling settlement. It's really eerie, in a way, how much the game mirrored the themes and ideas of the magazine's story, as you'll see.

In case you're wondering if Dogmeat, Fallout 4's faithful companion, is included in the story, the answer is yes! Here's a scan from the magazine that clearly shows why Bethesda felt Dogmeat was a useful and necessary inclusion in the game.

Much later in the story—which I have to say weirdly focuses a lot on the protagonist managing her inventory, running back and forth between her various settlements, and buying items from stores so she can improve her weapons—we finally reach the moment where she acquires some important information about a missing child. Don't worry, I won't spoil anything for you. And oddly, the magazine doesn't spoil anything, either.

Amazing, huh? I haven't heard officially from anyone at Bethesda, but I have a sneaking suspicion this issue of Radio Planet was a big inspiration for their game. Anyway, I picked up a couple of other magazines while I was at that little strange shop, so I'll share some more scans this week.

By the way, if you're interested in making your own covers of sci-fi magazines, there's a great online tool called The Pulp-O-Mizer! I know that if I ever wanted to create a fake sci-fi magazine cover for some reason, it's definitely what I'd use.

Want to see a guy beat Fallout: New Vegas in 20 minutes? Then you should watch this video of speedrunner Kungkobra, who set a new record by blowing through the entire thing in precisely 20 minutes and 47.6 seconds.

The mark is an Any% Speedrun, which means he can take advantage of any glitches and exploits, but not console commands or mods, to better his time. And clearly he does, taking advantage of quicksaving and quickloading glitches to skip NPC dialog and clip through walls, and by making use of the amusingly-named Speedcripple exploit.

When you cripple your leg, your speed is set to 0, then [brought] back to 60% of your normal speed, he explained on YouTube. By quickloading just before getting crippled, you can confuse the game into giving you 60% without actually being put to 0 (because we don't actually really get crippled). So you get a huge speedboost, and walk at 160% of your normal speed.

As noted on Reddit, the new record is the latest time in a back-and-forth exchange between Kungkobra and Swags_The_Dog, who managed a 20:54.1 run just one day earlier. With the gaps in time growing so small, every second counts, and so the character is built specifically for the task: Female (for the Black Widow perk), 10 charisma, with Speech tagged and the Good Natured trait. It's also why the NPC dialog is in Italian: The Italian voice actors say their lines more quickly than their English counterparts, so the cut scenes play through faster.

Thanks, Kotaku.

The two new Battleborn heroes revealed today on IGN are about as different from one another as they could possibly be. The shotgun-toting bruiser named Trevor Ghalt is a respected and well-liked military veteran who was among the first to recognize the grave threat facing the universe, while the stealthy assassin Deande served as the Spymaster for the Jennerit Empire for more than 1000 years before it fell under the control of the villainous usurper Lothar Rendain. But both are equally central to the game's story.

Ghalt is actually the founder of the Battleborn, assembling the team from both friends and foes to fight the mysterious evil that's snuffing out all light in the universe. He's a hook and trap specialist who focuses on controlling enemy movements on the battlefield, backed by a hard-hitting revolver shotgun that he can dual-wield as his Ultimate.

Deande, on the other hand, is all about subtlety and striking from the shadows. She can deploy a realistic clone and then slip into a stealth mode that allows her to move undetected and unleash a big burst-damage attack that will knock back and weaken enemies. Her ultimate allows her to do ten strikes at once, hitting every enemy caught in her targeting cone when triggered.

Battleborn will launch with seven playable characters, and Creative Director Randy Varnell said the remainder (there will be 25 in all) will be unlocked pretty quickly as you play through the game. But these two will take a little longer to get to than the rest. Ghalt and Deande, because they are central to the story mission, will unlock later on in the progression, he said. We want you to encounter them first interacting with you about the story, then later you get to unlock them and make them your own. These are characters that are extremely central to the plot of the game."

We got some hands-on time with Battleborn back in October, which you can read about here. It's currently scheduled to come out on May 3, 2016.

Let the liquid cooling begin

Asus ROG just added another high end motherboard for Skylake builds to its lineup, the Maximus VIII Formula. Based on Intel'z Z170 Express chipset, this ATX motherboard sports an LGA 1151 socket, four DIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of DDR4-3733 (OC) RAM, and exclusive CrossChill EK cooling.

The folks at Asus partnered with EK Water Blocks to develop the CrossChill EK, a hybrid cooling block that offers air or liquid cooling for up to a 23C temperature reduction. It consists of a copper channel with standard G1/4-inch thread fittings, giving it compatibility with many existing liquid-cooling setups.

Based on the press photos we've seen, it's a mean looking board with ROG armor, precision laser engraving, and 28 integrated LEDs for bling.

Beneath all that bling is a top-tier feature-seet consisting of three PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots, three PCI-E 2.0 x1 slots, U.2 and M.2 sockets for fast storage options, two SATA Express ports, eight SATA 6Gbps ports, GbE LAN, a pair of USB 3.1 (one Type-A and one Type-C) ports, ten USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, ROG SupremeFX 2015 8-channel HD audio, integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and the list goes on.

This is a board that you buy with the intent of overclocking (it's not required, of course), which if you're feeling lazy can be done with a click of a button. Asus claims that its 5-way optimization scheme will squeeze the most performance while balancing efficiency if going that route.

Asus didn't say when its ROG Maximus VIII Formula will be available or for how much, but in vague terms, we suspect it will arrive soon and cost a lot of pretty pennies.

Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Let the liquid cooling begin

Asus ROG just added another high end motherboard for Skylake builds to its lineup, the Maximus VIII Formula. Based on Intel'z Z170 Express chipset, this ATX motherboard sports an LGA 1151 socket, four DIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of DDR4-3733 (OC) RAM, and exclusive CrossChill EK cooling.

The folks at Asus partnered with EK Water Blocks to develop the CrossChill EK, a hybrid cooling block that offers air or liquid cooling for up to a 23C temperature reduction. It consists of a copper channel with standard G1/4-inch thread fittings, giving it compatibility with many existing liquid-cooling setups.

Based on the press photos we've seen, it's a mean looking board with ROG armor, precision laser engraving, and 28 integrated LEDs for bling.

Beneath all that bling is a top-tier feature-seet consisting of three PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots, three PCI-E 2.0 x1 slots, U.2 and M.2 sockets for fast storage options, two SATA Express ports, eight SATA 6Gbps ports, GbE LAN, a pair of USB 3.1 (one Type-A and one Type-C) ports, ten USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, ROG SupremeFX 2015 8-channel HD audio, integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and the list goes on.

This is a board that you buy with the intent of overclocking (it's not required, of course), which if you're feeling lazy can be done with a click of a button. Asus claims that its 5-way optimization scheme will squeeze the most performance while balancing efficiency if going that route.

Asus didn't say when its ROG Maximus VIII Formula will be available or for how much, but in vague terms, we suspect it will arrive soon and cost a lot of pretty pennies.

Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

First look at Google Glass 2.0

Google's head mounted display appropriately called Google Glass never did quite make it to store shelves as originally planned. Instead, Google shut down its Glass Explorer program in favor of taking the technology in a new direction, and we now have our first glimpse of what's in store for Google Glass 2.0.

The folks at 9To5Google have been closely following the Google Glass project since its inception and they recently spotted an FCC filing for the newest version of the headset, which Google is calling Enterprise Edition.

It doesn't look all that different from the Explorer Edition, though it sports some hardware upgrades and is foldable, the latter of which addresses an oft-requested feature.

While still a work in progress, the Enterprise Edition of Google Glass sports an Atom processor, better battery life, improved wireless performance with the addition of a 5GHz Wi-Fi band, better heat management, and faster overall performance.

Some of the tweaks to the design are subtle but welcome. One of them includes the relocation of the power button from inside the back of the headset. There's also an LED that comes on when the camera is being used, which should help address privacy concerns. It's also said to be waterproof.

9To5Google says the Enterprise Edition glasses will only be made available through Glass for Work startups, which will be able to load their own proprietary software before distributing them to employees. It doesn't appear that Google has any plans of bringing the new glasses to home consumers.

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The medieval MMO Life is Feudal: Your Own has embraced its "realistic" bona fides a little more tightly with the addition of seasonal weather that have a real impact on the game. Rain is great for plant growth but livestock prefers sunny days, and of course snow can be fun in small doses but for the most part is just an all-around hassle.

Piles of snow will actually accumulate during wintry weather, and then melt away when the days turn warmer. It can be used as crafting material for snowballs and snowmen—that's the fun part—but if it's left to accumulate, it will negate the speed bonus that's normally conferred when traveling along roads, and can even freeze and destroy crops.

The new weather effects look pretty nice, but developer Bitbox Ltd. warned that rain and snow particles can take a toll on lower-end graphics cards. To counter that, an option to turn the effects off has been added to the video options menu.

The enhanced weather effects were added to the game as part of an update released the day before Christmas, which also imposed a limit on sprinting to make it more of a short situational dash in combat, added large animal traps (which will also work on humans), implemented mass production recipes for charcoal, glass, and linen, and made a number of other changes and bug fixes. Details on all the new features and fixes can be found on Steam.

There s a case for saying that, with Hearthstone now available on just about every major platform this side of an abacus, the game is now in a mature period and next year will be the time to make some more significant changes to its core structure, UI, and balance. 2015 was a period of explosive growth but relative stability for the game, with Blizzard following the same adventure-expansion-adventure road map it had followed in 2014.

If The Grand Tournament was a relative disappointment thanks to having the dampest of squibs in the Inspire Keyword, the year is ending on a triumphal note with the far more fun League Of Explorers adventure, and the brilliance of Discover. 2016 may be time for an even bigger shake up. Here s what our regular writers would like to see happen. Let us know what you re hoping for in the comments.

Will Modern Leper Bindloss

League of Explorers demonstrated that even the comparatively smaller number of new cards introduced by an adventure, rather than a full set, can have a huge impact on the competitive metagame. Reno Jackson alone flipped several deckbuilding paradigms on their head, rewarding innovation and giving rise to new styles for players to master. LoE is full of such cards.

Compare its effect to that of the last full set—The Grand Tournament. TGT had far more cards than LoE, but the average quality was so much lower. Even in the pre-release set reviews, many pros were confidently dismissing the vast majority of the set as unplayable. While there were a few interesting cards, and one major show-stopper in Mysterious Challenger, TGT s impact was disappointingly minor. For the most part, people played the same decks as they did prior to the set being released.

In 2016 I m hoping to see more LoEs than TGTs. To keep players interested you need to release strong cards with mechanics that can be built around. Unsolved metagames are way more exciting than stagnant ones, and Blizzard need to make the most of their limited opportunities to shake things up.

Shevek

A lot of good players sour on Hearthstone because ladder feels like a chore, and high ranks seem meaningless. There is essentially no skill difference between rank 3 and the average Legend player. Even top Legend players routinely fluctuate by thousands of ranks within a few hours. I would like to see ladder changed in three ways:

1. More stable Legend ranks.

2. A Grandmaster division for players that are consistently top 200. (There really is a distinct group that outperforms the rest of Legend players.)

3. Active players should stay Legend after season reset. At lowest, Legend should reset to rank 5 — does anybody really doubt that we can climb back up?

Ladder should feel like working your way into an exclusive club, not a repetitive grind that just gets erased. Starting ladder mid-month shouldn t mean being matched at the wrong skill level. Good players shouldn t feel penalized for experimenting. There may not be many of us, but Legend players are the most visible and passionate members of the community. It s important that we have fun.

Simon Sottle Welch

Since the release of League of Explorers shook up the meta, I think the game is in a pretty great place in terms of balance and variety. If I were Blizzard I would focus heavily in 2016 on improving the user experience. Obvious things like more deck slots are a given at this point, but improvements to the spectator mode are also needed with an even bigger focus on the competitive scene next year.

On top of this I'd like to see a more robust collection manager, a quick animations option to speed complex turns up, and a "perma-squelch" option. This is a minimum, but on top of those features they could look at visible ladder rankings (with potential opt-in spectate options for high-ranked players), and a resume from replay feature to better handle disconnects. The game itself is in fantastic shape, they just need to make sure we have all the tools for players to enjoy it to its fullest."

Tim Clark

I d like to Blizzard to be more generous to the average ladder grinder. The rewards system introduced this year that hands out a few golden cards depending on where you ranked each season was a start, but should just be the first step. Why not get a new card with each rank you climb, and a golden every five? It d feel far more immediate and exciting. I also think win streaks should continue until Rank 3. There s absolutely no reason the climb needs to be such a trudge. Having to get from 3 to Legend would still demand serious consistency and effort.

I d also dump all the win X games with Y class quests. People feel compelled to complete these to get the gold they need, and end up playing classes they re not comfortable with and having a rough time because they can t crank the wins out. Far better to just have play X games with Y , and then make it so the matches only register if you don t concede, so you have to see them out. Finally, I think Blizzard needs to think hard about selling pre-built decks, so new players can pick up, say, a decent but not quite top tier Tempo Mage for $15. As the game s card pool continues to expand, the perceived barriers to entry in terms of the collection you need to be competitive is becoming hugely daunting.

Radoslav "Nydra" Kolev

Since the grand remodeling of the 2016 World Tour covered most of what I wanted improved about competitive Hearthstone, here s me raising a glass to a new year full of vital changes in the game itself. No, I don t anxiously crave for more deck slots, or alternative portraits, or more cards, or even strange as it may sound better balanced classes. For me, the bright future of Hearthstone is rooted in well designed, innovation-friendly expansions. I want another thought-provoking, solid mechanic like Discover, that dramatically raises the skill cap in terms of both deckbuilding and decision making.

I want to see bravely designed cards which can be potential game changers, (and yes, that means more cards like Emperor Thaurissan, Reno Jackson, Brann Bronzebeard, Muster for Battle and so on), and not just a safe and slow power creep. Ideally, LoE will be the first of many expansions that penetrate and alter Hearthstone on multiple levels. The game needs to feel different after every new card release, otherwise what s the point? Oh, and I wouldn t say no some quality of life features: player profiles which display statistical data are top of my list.

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!