Unlike the other gaming platforms we've been evaluating here at the end of the year, the PC's been around for decades. Recently, the PC's long legacy of openness and customization has come into conflict with a mainstream that's finally-finally-realized just how big of a deal PC gaming actually is. By and large, the PC is in a great place in 2015.

The TechSpot PC Buying Guide offers an in-depth list of today's best desktop PC hardware, spanning four unique yet typical budgets and a fifth for the no-expense spared, extreme PC crowd.

The Z170 chipset has been available for some time now, but due to Intel's staggered launch of Skylake-S, other chipsets from this generation have just recently become available. In addition to the Z170, there are now five other consumer chipsets: the H170 and H110 for consumers and the B150, Q150, and Q170 for business. We explain the differences between them side-by-side.

Part one of this series focused on software. This second part will focus mostly on the iPhone 6s' hardware, and how it compares to some of the best Android devices I've used this year. Apple is widely respected for their hardware design, both on the inside and outside of their phones, but just how good is it in 2015?

There have been many popular and important games included with operating systems over the years. But only one game can lay claim to having once been the most-used Windows application in the world, as Microsoft's Chris Sells described Solitaire back in 2004. This is the story of Solitaire, which has been included with every copy of Windows since version 3.0.

Flash, it's been a good run. We've had a lot of fun together, but it's time to get some distance.. permanently. That doesn't erase my fond memories of playing together back in the day, but we both have to wake up and face the truth. You're outdated and insecure and untrustworthy. It's not me, it's you.

There's no clear-cut metric to use as a guideline if you're shopping for a sound card. Lengthy audiophile reviews are available, but they generally don't offer a quantifiable takeaway if you have a limited point of reference and don't know much about the subject to begin with. I fall into that category.

With the recent launch of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, I decided to pick up one of Apple's latest smartphones and use it exclusively for two weeks. What follows are my thoughts on the phone and the ecosystem as primarily an Android user, how the two experiences compare, and whether long-time Android users should contemplate an iOS switch.

Water cooling systems -- whether they are a custom loop or an AIO -- all follow the same basic principles. You have the reservoir, the pump, the radiator, the fans, some tubing, a block (for either the CPU, GPU, or both), and the water itself. After years of working with water cooling kits, here are some important tips to help you get the most out of your system.

As Steam has expanded over the years it's also taken on an infernal-machine-like quality; it's become this cacophonous conglomerate of bells and whistles, many of which are buried under other bells and whistles. It's hard to know everything it is capable of, so here are a few lesser-known Steam features I've come across.

Logitech recently reached out to us for a tour of their audio headquarters in Camas, Washington, where it's spent the last 18 months designing what it believes to be the best sounding, most well-featured headset on the market, gaming or otherwise. In fact, they're so confident in the Artemis Spectrum, it bravely threw its creation to a small pack of skeptical tech journalists in hopes they'd go home impressed. Here are our thoughts.

The last two decades has seen users rising from forty million to around 3 billion, with one billion added in the last four-five years itself. And yet over 4 billion people remain unconnected to the Internet.

Many of Windows 10's key features have been talked about at length, but the operating system actually comes with a lot of great features that aren't as immediately obvious to everyday users and even enthusiasts. Here are the top 10 hidden features of Windows 10.

Thanks to the rapid rate of change in video games, both my job and the industry I cover are practically unrecognisable. This is largely what keeps me interested in video games, this pace of transformation: there is always something new to cover, and we're always trying to find new ways to talk about it.

There are some classic PC games -- some old enough to buy their own alcohol -- that are as good today as the day they were released. You may not have heard of all of them. After all, when a game has been out for a while, people generally stop talking about it. They are still out there though, waiting patiently for someone to pick them up and play. In this article, we are looking specifically at games that are still fun to play, ten or more years old, and are the best of their style in their series.

For a very long time, people have imagined the life of a video game tester, not as 9-to-5 job but as the fantasy of teenagers everywhere. Who wouldn't want to sit on a comfy couch and play games all day. Reality is a little different. Over the past few months I've had extensive conversations with several dozen current and former QA testers in an attempt to explore the world of video game testing and try to explain what it's really like to play games for a living.

Take a look back at how Intel CPUs have progressed over the years. We're testing and comparing the original Core 2 Duo CPUs against the Nehalem-based Core i5-760 and Core i7-870, the Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2700K chips, and then to the current generation Haswell Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 parts.

One of the worst things about growing up is that you never seem to have any time left over for yourself. Sure, you may still watch a bunch of television shows and go to concerts, but video games? Video games could be kicked to the curb. In an attempt to convince more people to at least try to make gaming more a part of their life, here are some tips for time management that will help them do so.

While it may seem antiquated the command line is the most flexible and powerful way to perform tasks in Linux. In the first part of our ongoing command line series, we discussed some of the very basic operations, and now we'll build on that as we discuss more things like file metadata, permissions, timestamps, as well as some new tools like tee, Vim, and more.

There once was a time15 years ago when the concept of pre-ordering made sense. Publishers would have a better idea of how many boxes they'd need to ship, and customers could guarantee they'd get hold of the latest game as soon as it was released. It was a good arrangement! It didn't take long for publishers and retailers to realise, though, that once a customer put their money down for a game that wasn't finished, that customer was on the hook.

Microsoft is set to release Windows 10 later this year and users of current versions of the operating system will get an upgrade free of charge. So where's the confusion? There has been speculation about who gets the free upgrade and who doesn't. Here's a brief overview of the different upgrade paths to Windows 10.

Google recently said it best: photos are more than just pixels. They're moments in time we'll never want to forget. Depending on your age and / or life experiences, that may not mean much to you at this point. Having crossed into my 30s a few years back and having already lost both parents and a best friend, it certainly resonates with me. Memories fade but the images you capture with friends and family last a lifetime.

Last week Steam added a refund procedure that allows you to get a full refund on any Steam game you've purchased in the last 14 days and played for less than 2 hours. The sudden manner in which the refund program was announced and implemented has many developers asking: "Is this good for me?" Let's go through the new refund flow together.

I was a big fan of Windows Phone 8 when it was released, but with Microsoft neglecting their smartphone platform in the last year, the OS has slipped far behind Android 5.0 and iOS 8. What follows in this article is a list of changes, improvements and new features I hope Microsoft will include when Windows 10 Mobile lands later this year.

Breaking down today's best hardware across five price points, from Budget Box to Extreme Machine, the TechSpot PC buying guide was recently updated with our latest recommendations. Now, for the first time, we are actually going to build each system and show you the kind of performance each price point delivers.

The TechSpot PC Buying Guide offers an in-depth list of today's best desktop PC hardware, spanning four unique yet typical budgets and a fifth for the no-expense spared, extreme PC crowd.

Over the past four decades, there have been some plain consoles, sometimes even some ugly consoles, but we don't care about them today. Today, we celebrate the best-looking video game consoles (no handhelds) of all time.

While frequency is a decent indicator of how well a CPU will perform in some programs, when the ability to use multiple cores is factored in it can get tricky as not all programs are as efficient at using them. Using a mathematical equation called Amdahl's Law you can determine how efficient your program is at using multiple CPU cores (it's parallelization efficiency) and then use that to estimate the performance of different CPU models.

An avalanche of reports started to surface last September when users began to notice that their usually speedy Samsung SSD 840 and SSD 840 EVO drives were no longer performing as they used to. We've looked deep into the problem to understand what's been fixed and what hasn't. Samsung owes its customers an explanation.

Over the years, Steam has accumulated a number of great games that are free-to-play, and I'm here to tell you which ones you should check out.