Editors’ Picks: Digital Discoveries
Jarred Walton, Senior Editor, and Zak Storey, Staff Writer, discuss their latest finds
A few things in life are certain: death, taxes, and data loss. It doesn’t matter how good technology becomes or how frequently you upgrade, at some point, your primary storage device containing important data will fail. I’ve only lost a few drives over my several decades in the tech field, and each one was a painful experience.
There are many ways to do backups, but one of the best options is a good NAS. The Synology DS415+ is great, with support for up to four drives (RAID 0,1, 5, 6, and 10 supported); if you don’t need four drives, the DS716+ is the two-bay alternative. You can use the software to configure automatic backups from multiple devices (Windows and OS X), and have those backups sync with other devices or upload to the cloud.
It’s not just about backing up data, either. The DS415+ includes two GbE Ethernet ports with support for link aggregation and failover. It can function as a server as well, with options for mail, VPN, DHCP, and more. That’s because this is basically a mini PC, with an Atom C2538 processor and 2GB RAM. Whether it’s for your home or a small business, and whether you use hard drives or fast SSDs, the DS415+ is awesome. I have over half a terabyte of benchmark files, which now live on my NAS for easy access. $600 without disks, www.synology.com This issue’s Build It was a special one for me. Not only was it my first venture into hardline water cooling, but it also used the chip I’d bought for my own personal build: a prebinned 4.9GHz-capable Intel Core i7-6700K. It’s a beauty, capable of running stock speeds at less than 1.1V. Cool enough, right? Well, yeah, but you can always do more. For this build, I decided to opt for something different: EKWB’s Indigo XS TIM.
It’s a phase-change metallic alloy (PCMA) thermal interface—a very soft metal substance. You place it between an extremely clean CPU and the heatsink, apply pressure, and attach the heatsink as usual. The next bit is trickier: the reflow procedure. You have to run an instance of Prime 95 for five minutes, with the pump disabled. The idea is to get your processor to around 85 C, and let it sit there while the PCMA melts between the two contacts. Then it’s simply a case of switching off your machine for 45 minutes to an hour, and you’re good to go.
Any good? Well, at idle I was registering temperatures as low as 23OC, and under load our temperatures were at 35OC. Granted, we have some meaty water cooling to back it up, but having the most efficient interface possible is certainly helping. $28, www.ekwb.com