Tech Triumphs and Tragedies

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

WITH ANY NEW CPU architecture, our first build

Where are our graphics cards?

No relief until the end of 2022

NO GAMING WHILE DRIVING

TESLA WARNED AFTER SOFTWARE UPDATE

SSD SLOWDOWN

It turns out that Windows 11’s sluggishness isn’t your imagination

INTEL’S ARC ALCHEMIST GPU REVEALED

And then there were three

RENT OUT YOUR RIG

Free software, in return for your processing power

Life360 sells your location data

LIFE360 CLAIMS TO BE the world’s leading family

Stop stealing presents

A bill has been reintroduced to Congress to

Going off track

NordicTrack sells a $3,999 X32i smart treadmill that

Windows 10 vs. Windows 11

OH, WINDOWS 11, how I love to hate you. Change for the sake of change doesn’t sit well with me, and Windows 11 has completely altered the comfortable Windows 10 house I’ve been living in since 2015. A new coat of paint would have been fine, but it seems as though the UI designers also felt the need to rearrange the furniture, switch around the drawers, and clean house a bunch of functionality that I liked. This is not okay

THE TOP FIVE AUDIO PRODUCTION PROGRAMS

Music production no longer involves just a guitar

Unbelievable bork

ASUS’S LATEST HIGH-SPEC TABLET PC hit my desk recently. Apart from its snazzy box, the most striking thing about the Vivobook 13 Slate OLED was a painfully obvious flaw. And that got me pondering how a fundamentally borked product makes it through the planning process and into customers’ hands. You’d think obvious flaws or configuration errors would be filtered out, these days. But that Asus tablet, well, let’s just say it has friends

USB drive disaster PC overwhelmed Old password tool

THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES

LETTERS

WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON

THE BUILDS

THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES

THE ALDER LAKE MACHINE

New-gen Intel CPU, DDR5, plus a hef ty graphics card... are you as excited as we are?

A NEW GENERATION

IT’S GOOD ON PAPER. BUT HOW WILL THIS ‘NEW GEN’ SYSTEM ACTUALLY PERFORM?

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

We take a closer look at Intel’s new Alder Lake CPUs

SAVE OUR SYSTEMS!

Discover how to fix your Windows problems large and small with the help of Nick Peers.

CENTERFOLD

PERFORMANCE GEAR LAID BARE

THE BEST OF MAXIMUM PC

As Maximum PC heads into a new era, we reminisce about the origins of our favorite magazine and how far the PC itself has come in that time

TIP OF THE MONTH

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDES TO IMPROVING YOUR PC

Fairphone True Wireless Stereo Earbuds

THIS MONTH WE DISSECT

Photoshop Pop Art

IN THE WORLD OF ART, there are many

Machine of the Month: Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (1981)

THIS MONTH we feature a cult computer that

Run Windows 11 on a Raspberry Pi 4

YOU’LL NEED THIS A RASPBERRY PI 4 (4GB

Stepping into music production

OVER THE PAST DECADE, the way we listen

Gaming laptops suck

Tell me I’m wrong

Gigaby te RTX 3070 Ti Gaming OC

Factory overclocking only gets you so far

MSI GS76 Stealth

Potent power in a slick, stealthy chassis

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition

Gaming meets music in Asus’s latest portable PC

Dell S2722DGM

An affordable 1440p gaming monitor

HP Z43

Productivity on a massive scale

Endgame Gear XM1 RGB White

A fresh, crisp look for the charming XM1 mouse

EPOS Adapt 360 White

Party at the front, business at the back

ASUS ROG STRIX Scope TKL Deluxe

Is TKL the perfect size for gamers?

ASUS ROG Ryujin II 360 AIO

A cooler too hot to handle

Forza Horizon 5

Along the plains of Mexico

FL Studio 20 vs Pro Tools

Which DAW hits the right notes?