TESTED &
GEEK
APPROVED
AN M.2 SSD might not be the usual fare
for the “Geek Tested” column, but this
one’s a bit different. With Gen4 NVMe
arriving, Gen3 M.2 drives now taking
something of a back seat in this fine
publication, but we really wanted
to squeeze the Genesis Xtreme in.
You probably haven’t heard of Asura
before, because it was founded barely
a year ago in Chino, California, and
the Genesis Xtreme is its very first
commercially available product.
Focused on bringing high-end
hardware to enthusiasts around the
world, Asura currently only has the one
product, although its upcoming “Steel
Series” and “Titanium Series” lines
promise more top-quality components.
Asura states that its premium parts
focus on “quality, performance, and
reliability,” and that certainly seems to
be the case with the Genesis Xtreme.
As Gen3 M.2 SSDs go, it manages to
impress. It reliably reached 3GB/s
of both read and write times in our
benchmarks, which pretty much
puts it on a par with other high-speed
SSDs at the same price. It’s generally
a solid piece of hardware, providing a
good amount of M.2 storage for under
200 dollars. The USP here is the RGB
lighting on the drive—it’s fairly subtle,
pulsing in a light rainbow pattern that
easily matches with various other
lighting effects. The drive is fairly
bulky, so it might demand careful
situation on some motherboards, but
the side panels and part of the heatsink
can be easily removed if a smaller
profile is needed. –CGAsura
Genesis
Xtreme 1TB
AUDACITYThe best things in life
are free, or so I’ve
heard. When it comes
to computers and
software, however,
that’s often not quite true, but the free
and open-source Audacity is my go-to
utility for recording and editing audio.
Even better, for those of you who don’t
particularly care for Windows, it’s
available and works great on OS X and
GNU/Linux as well. To be clear, I’m by no
means a recording professional. I’m sure
there are other tools that are better in
various ways. I’m also sure they cost way
more money. But Audacity gets the job
done for when I’m recording voice-overs
and editing audio tracks, and I’m really
only scratching the surface of what it can
do. The application supports a variety
of plugins and effects, quick and simple
editing commands, and imports/exports
every audio format I’ve cared to use. Want
to play with MIDI files? It can do that as
well. We’re basically in the golden age
of computing, as far as I’m concerned,
where tools and software that used to cost
hundreds of dollars are now available for
free—though you can make a donation
if you want, which I’m sure the Audacity
team would appreciate.
Free, http://www.audacityteam.orgLOGITECH G560
LIGHTSYNC SPEAKERSI’ve been in love with
these speakers since I
got them as a birthday
gift, and I’m glad I don’t
have downstairs neighbors. My previous
set of PC speakers was some 20-year-old
Bose system, where the mute/unmute
touchpad had a mind of its own. (It was
like a ghost kept touching it.) So, I was
using a headset for so long I forgot what
a satisfying bass pulse felt like when it
bounced off the walls and rippled through
my ear drums into my chest. The G560
comes with a subwoofer as big as my
torso, two speakers with RGB lighting that
you can sync with your game or music,
and it’s all compatible with 7.1 DTS:X. If I
don’t need to be in game chat, I’ll use these
speakers for sound instead, because the
directional sound quality is just as good as
m o s t g a m i n g h e a d s e t s — n o t a s i m m e r s i v e ,
but with the surround sound enabled, it’s
pretty darn close. I could tell if footsteps
were quickly approaching behind me or
if there was gunfire in the distance while
playing Overwatch and other multiplayer
FPSes. And, if you open the Logitech G
Hub to fine-tune the sound, you’ll see that
every volume control goes up to 11. How’s
that for a nod to the film This is Spinal Tap?
$200, http://www.logitechg.comSenior editor, Jarred Walton, and hardware staff writer,
Joanna Nelius, have been playing around with audioEditors’ Picks:
Digital Discoveries
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maximumpc.com OCT 2019 MAXIMUMPC 93