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Case Conundrums

Hi folks—long-time reader and love the mag. I have a Maingear Shift PC that’s getting long in the tooth (seven-year-old Haswell processor, one panel doesn’t stay in). I’m looking into building a new PC. One minor question, and don’t laugh: My PC sits between my desk and sofa, and because of the height of the PC, it’s a fantastic drink-holder as the height is exactly the same level as the arm on my sofa. Is there an equivalent-sized new case that’s easy to build in that you would recommend? The sharp edges of the Shift were another detriment, although it looks great—thanks! – Jerry

EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: This is a tough one, actually more because the dimensions are incredibly difficult to source. We’ve found a review from Tom’s Guide back in 2014 for the Maingear Shift that seems to be the only place that lists the case’s height. And even then they’ve failed to list in which order those dimensions are measured, so we’re assuming that it’s 24 inches tall. It’s a bit problematic as there’s a ton of full towers but some are much taller than that, others much shorter, and some have bizarre top-panel design features, which are a bit annoying if you’re trying to keep a drink on there. One of the closest we can find to that height is be quiet!’s Dark Base Pro 900, but it comes in just slightly shorter at 23 inches.

What I might be more tempted to recommend is that you build some sort of small plinth for your PC out of a few off-cuts of wood, or something along those lines.

It’s a small bit of DIY, but that way you can control exactly how high your PC case is, and it gives you access to more cases, as you’ll only need to adjust the height of your plinth. It’s also a good idea if your PC is sat on carpet, as you can keep it lifted off the ground and it’ll give the power supply fan (if it’s facing down) better access to cool air.

I’m a fan of using recycled pallet wood for DIY projects, as long as you get the right stuff to use indoors. It gives things a rustic feel, and you can paint it, stain it, or oil it whatever color you want to match the rest of your furniture. Also, if you’re not great at woodwork you can claim it’s “meant to look that way because it’s rustic.” I found a place local to me that sells recycled pallet wood boards at 25 cents per foot, so it's worth checking out.

Microsoft Edge Virus

Hi, In other circumstances, I might have been willing to give MS Edge a go, say if they offered it for download like almost every other browser in the world. But the way that MS jammed it down my throat, making it next to impossible to uninstall (even through power shell) and having it run at startup in spite of being disabled in Task Manager… it’s a bit much. I was able to get it off my computer after much fiddling around (booting to Linux Live, etc) but what are they thinking? – Steve G

EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: I’m so glad you gave me the opportunity to rant about this, because I can’t even begin to explain to you how frustrated I was when that update came around, and it was like “try Microsoft Edge,” massive full-screen window, no way of clicking out of it without hitting continue, then it offered to import all of my Firefox bookmarks. Absolutely agree with you, it’s obtuse and reeks of that same notion back when

Apple added that U2 album to everyone’s iPhones.

It certainly doesn’t help its case, I know Edge is now a lot better than what it used to be, it’s basically just a spin-off of Google’s Chromium, complete with access to its extensions and so on, but it’s a bit gross really. That said, once I got past the update, I unpinned the icon from my Windows bar, deleted the icon from my desktop and it hasn’t bothered me since. The only thing I do

use it for currently is to open PDFs I download on Firefox, and that’s about it.

Interesting to know you can get rid of it entirely by delving into Linux. I might have to get the guys in the lab to write something up on that.

The Ultimate Data Scientist’s Rig

I read the letter from Tali Kadosh in your June 2020 issue, and I'd like to make a similar request. Like Tali,

I’m not into gaming, but I enjoy reading your magazine to keep up with the latest developments. I've never done my own build, but would like to do so in the next year or so.

I’m glad to know you have an issue coming out soon that will feature a build not necessarily targeted at gamers, but I would like to suggest another specific build for a future issue. My interest is in the field of data science, and my suggestion is to feature a build worthy of being called “The Ultimate Data Scientist’s Rig.”

Many of the tasks data scientists perform are incredibly resource-intensive. Beyond performing traditional statistical analysis on large datasets, a PC’s limits can really be put to the test by machine learning and deep learning models. Not only is there a need for a great deal of processing capacity and memory, but results often need to be displayed in sophisticated data visualizations. Therefore, graphics processing capability is also a concern, although perhaps not as much as it is for your gamers.

Given that “Data Scientist” was considered the #1 job in America four years in a row by Glassdoor, and is still ranked #3 in 2020, I’m sure such a feature would be very wellreceived. And I’m guessing your crew would enjoy doing this type of build very much!

–Vincent Thompson

EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: I will thank you in advance, because we’re going to cover this topic next issue on the back of your email. It’s quite the interesting build you’ve recommended, and I’ve been chatting with Christian a lot about how best to do this. We’ve been seeing what parts we can get in, and currently have a build list sitting at around the $3,000-$4,000 mark, which I know sounds a bit pricey, but should hit the nail on the head for superior dataset performance.

Threadripper’s going to be at that heart of this build, I won’t give too much away about the rest of the spec, but we’re looking at pairing AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3970X—which gives us access to 32 cores and 64 threads—with 128GB of high-speed DDR4. Although it's worth noting that this isn’t going to be ECC memory or anything along those lines (way too expensive), so you’d need to recheck your calculations on a “proper” data analysis system. We’re also going to offer some ideas for downgrades and other options you could pick if the price seems a bit insane.

This also gave me some inspiration during our benchmark recalibration for the coming year. You’ll notice we’re including a protein-folding benchmark, and CompuBench’s N-Body simulation test as well.

No Microsoft Teams?

I’ve been a long-time subscriber and gadget wonk. I’ve been building PCs and servers for ages, and I enjoy your magazine.

I was reading through my July 2020 issue and Christian Guyton’s work-from-home primer. As an IT consultant for years and a work-fromhome regular, I enjoyed Christian’s article but was surprised by his failure to mention Microsoft Teams as a UC (unified communications) tool/platform. Teams evolved out of Skype for Business, and it is the primary way through which many of us communicate and do remote business these days. I saw that Zoom was mentioned and described, but many IT organizations positively forbid the use of Zoom in businessrelated dealings due to recent (and significant) security gaps. Teams comes with just about every Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) subscription, so it’s ubiquitous and readily available to most work-fromhome people.

As a long-time supporter of Microsoft (and recently renewed Microsoft MVP),

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out this apparent oversight. Several of us in the MVP community host a regular twice-weekly webcast ( bit. ly/39heZyS) and maintain a Facebook group page ( bit. ly/2WIapod) to help people understand and use Teams more effectively, as well as answer any questions. I would be eternally grateful if you spent a little time raising awareness of Teams in a future issue. Keep up the awesome work, and steer clear of Rona!

–Sean McDonough

EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: I think really it’s just a lack of experience on our part. Our publishing house in particular is a

Google House, so neither myself nor Christian have much experience when it comes to using Microsoft Teams in a professional manner. However, I do agree with you, it’s something we should cover going forward.

I don’t really see life changing that much at this point. I think this new normal of ours, and working from home, is only going to accelerate going forward, especially as so many companies are finding that the vast majority of their staff can effectively work from home for far less cost to them. That's great news for anyone in the PC industry.

We’ve already planned the next issue, but I will schedule a tutorial for the issue after, going through how to use teams, it will be beneficial for everyone I think—even the MaximumPC team!