Hasta La Gadget!

Okay, okay, NVIDIA’s “Battlebox” PCs won’t quite power the Large Hadron Collider, but it will offer more power than you’ll need to play basically any game available (or any game arriving in the coming holiday deluge). The initiative focuses on NVIDIA working with several boutique PC makers to provide 2-way SLI setups on its GTX 780 and Titan GPUs, capable of supporting gaming in 4K resolution. Providers vary between North America and Europe, but the usual players are on board: Falcon Northwest, Maingear, Cyberpower, etc.

Of course, with great power comes great cost — Chillblast’s Fusion Battlebox, for instance, starts at £2,999.00 (about $4,870), and Maingear’s Shift starts at $2,300 — so you’d better be ready to shell out some serious cash for 4K gaming.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, HD, NVIDIA

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Source: GeForce (US), GeForce (UK / EU)

As if shelling out $900 this holiday to snag the two next-gen game consoles wasn’t enough, Xi3’s Piston modular gaming PC is arriving on November 29th for $1,000. Should money be no object to you, the adorable little box is available for pre-order right this minute, and that’ll lock in an earlier arrival by two weeks. Included in today’s news of the Piston’s launch date is word that internal storage capacity was upped by another SSD connector; Xi3 says up to 1TB of SSD storage is now supported.

In a hilarious nod to Valve’s Steam Machines news last week, Xi3 notes, “By adding a second SSD to their Pistons, users will be able to load a second operating system onto their machines, including the newly announced SteamOS.” As previously reported, Xi3 is (at least in part) financially-backed by Valve, and the Piston is a bit of a “Steambox” (the previous name for Valve’s Steam Machines effort) itself. SteamOS is said to be coming “soon,” ahead of Steam Machines’ official launch in 2014, and you’ll see no surprise on our faces should SteamOS arrive ahead of Piston’s November 15th pre-order availability.

On Xi3’s homepage, the Piston is positioned with a wireless, Piston-branded gamepad (seen above). It’s unclear if it ships with the system later this year, so we’ve reached out to Xi3 for more info.

Filed under: Desktops, Misc, Gaming, Peripherals, HD

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Computer chipmaker AMD and a company called Raptr have announced that they have teamed up to build a new application for computer gamers called AMD Gaming Evolved. The goal of the application is to make PC gaming as easy as console gaming. The app will allow AMD hardware users get the most performance out of […]

The Mac version is still only promised to be coming soon, but Amazon has today delivered a fairly big update to its Cloud Player for PC application. It now boasts an integrated MP3 store, which will let you browse and purchase music without having to visit Amazon’s website. Naturally, all purchases made through the app will then be accessible from any other capable device, and you’ll see Amazon’s usual recommendations for new music based on your purchases. Beyond that, though, the application itself appears to remain mostly unchanged.

Filed under: Software, Amazon

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Source: Amazon

I don’t have an audiophile grade bone in my body. As long as there’s bass and I can understand the words in songs and in my favorite movies, I really don’t care what my speakers sound like. There are many people out there who are audiophiles and have ears good enough to hear the difference between cheap speakers and good speakers. If you can really discern the difference between high-quality sound and normal sound you’ll appreciate the KEF X300AW Wireless speakers.

The speakers are based on the well-reviewed X300A, and have two class AB amplifiers inside each one. A 50-watt amplifier drives the midrange and low end sound, while a 20-watt amp handles high frequencies for best sound quality overall. Their 802.11 b/g wireless capability allows the speakers to support streaming from mobile devices that are Airplay or DLNA compatible.

The speakers are also designed to connect directly to your Windows or Mac computer using a USB cable. When connected via USB the speakers support 96 kHz/24-bit HD audio and have a built-in digital analog converter. The manufacturer also equips the speakers with a 3.5 mm analog input. They’re available in either gunmetal or white cabinets.

If you think these sound like the speakers for you, get a load of the price. The speakers are available for $999.99(USD), which is a whole lot of cash for computer speakers. If you don’t need the wireless capability, the X300A speakers can be had for $200 less.