Author Archives: Alaina Yee

These days, optical drive bays in cases have all but gone the way of the dinosaurs. Whenever you do find one, it’s usually in an ultra-budget model—hunting for a more premium case that supports a Blu-Ray or even DVD drive can be rough going.So o… Continue reading →

After what seemed like an endless wait, Lian Li has finally released the O11 Dynamic Mini—the littlest version of its popular O11 Dynamic cases. Since we last saw it at CES 2020, it’s undergone several minor changes, but has hung onto its most i… Continue reading →

Not everyone needs a computer with a full set of bells and whistles. A Chromebook’s simplified interface makes it popular with schools—and those of us who serve as IT support for less tech-savvy relatives. You don’t need to worry about managi… Continue reading →

The back-to-school season is upon us once more, but with so many schools having moved to distance learning, good PC deals are harder to come by than before. Stores aren’t skimping—demand is just that high for budget laptops and Chromebooks. In f… Continue reading →

Be Quiet’s Pure Base 500 mid-tower case launched last year with a focus on minimizing fan noise, but as usual with quiet cases, its temperatures ran warm. Happily, you can now bypass that catch with the company’s airflow variant, the Pure Base 5… Continue reading →

With all the upheaval and cancellation of trade shows this year, product announcements have been plentiful and scattershot as companies fire off news at different times. It’s a lot to take in—so to help you keep up, we’ve pulled out the best o… Continue reading →

Diving into Halo 3’s campaign with an online friend (or several) sometimes simply doesn’t…work. You’ll send out the invites and group up, pick and load a mission, and then the game abruptly hangs before kicking you to the main screen. Or you… Continue reading →

For a short while, PC building was gloriously affordable. The cost of graphics cards and RAM finally dropped after 2018’s dark times, AMD kept cramming more cores into its CPU lineup without increasing prices, and SSDs could be had for a song.Nowa… Continue reading →

Last year, Silverstone released the Lucid LD03, a slender micro tower swathed in dark tempered glass. Like its inspiration—the company’s popular FT03, which came out in 2011—this mini-ITX case both rotates the motherboard by 90 degrees and ven… Continue reading →