While AMD’s FX-9590 CPU has been in systems for over a year, it suddenly comes to market as a retail package for end-users to buy with a bundled liquid cooling system. This 220W CPU that has a turbo speed of 5.0 GHz still sits at the top of AMD’s performance stack, despite subsequent improvements in the architecture since. We have decided to grab ASRock’s 990FX Extreme9 and an FX-9590 for a review to see if it still is the AMD performance CPU champion.

Adam Walker is the first Briton to complete the Ocean's 7 challenge, a tough series of long-distance, open-water swims.

A music in Argentina teacher has made his first public appearance since finding out he is the grandson of a prominent human rights campaigner.

Alastair Leithead visits the San Diego research centre where a serum used on two US Ebola patients was developed.

Alastair Leithead visits the San Diego research centre where a serum used on two US Ebola patients was developed.

Following up on last week's Best Budget PC Guide, today we have midrange systems with roughly twice the cost. Of all the systems types to configure, the midrange market can be the most difficult. With budget systems you're often limited in what you can do by price constraints while at the high end the best components are usually pretty clear cut choices; for midrange builds there are many factors to consider. One of the core questions you always need to answer is: what do you want to do with the system? Office PCs will often have a different goal than something for a student, and there are many ways to adapt a particular system to fit the needs of the user. We have two configurations again, one AMD and one Intel, with optional graphics cards for those who want a system capable of handling the latest games. Let's start with AMD:

Midrange AMD System Component Description Price CPU AMD A10-7850K (4x3.7-4.0GHz, 4MB, 95W, 28nm) $170 Motherboard MSI A88X-G43 $78 RAM Team Vulcan 2x4GB DDR3-2133 CL10 1.65V $78 Storage Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB $84 SSD Crucial MX100 256GB $109 Case Fractal Design Core 3300 $63 Power Supply Rosewill Capstone 450W 80 Plus Gold $60 Subtotal   $642 GPU (Optional) Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 2GB $190 GPU (Alternative) Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB $138 Total with GPU   $832

Right from the first component choice – the APU – we have plenty of things to consider. I've tailored the above build more towards performance than price or power, so the A10-7850K is really the only APU that makes sense. (You can make an argument for an AM3+ CPU like the FX-6300 or FX8320, but considering that platform has been around a while and is basically fading away I'm hesitant to recommend that route.) Besides the quad-core (dual-module) CPU portion of the APU, the 7850K has the full 512 core (eight Compute Unit) GPU. The A10-7800 is an option to consider at its $155 MSRP, but the only place I can find with the part in stock charges $166; for $4 more you might as well just go whole hog and get the 7850K. Dropping down to an A10-7700K will lose two of the GPU CUs and 200MHz off the CPU for $15, so it's also worth a thought, but if you don't need faster GPU performance you might as well go for the A8-7600 for $110 at that point.

For the rest of the system, the MSI motherboard has AMD's latest A88X chipset, we've selected DDR3-2133 RAM to provide increased bandwidth for the APU graphics, and the case is Fractal Design's latest Core 3300 (though you can use the case in the Intel build as an alternative). For storage, we've again included both an SSD for the OS and apps with a rather large 2TB HDD for mass storage; you could easily drop the HDD if you don't need that much storage, but for any modern system I simply refuse to leave out an SSD. The Crucial MX100 isn't the fastest SSD on the planet, but the price makes it incredibly attractive. Finally, the power supply may be overkill for the base build, but having some power to spare means adding a graphics card is always an option.

Speaking of graphics cards, while the APU graphics will do fine for most tasks and even light gaming, if you want to be able to play most games at 1080p with medium or higher detail settings, a dedicated graphics card is required. Here we've listed two options: NVIDIA's GTX 750 Ti (Maxwell) card and AMD's R9 270X card. The AMD card is faster and costs more, and it also uses a lot more power; if you want 1080p with high quality settings in most games, that's the card to get (and it's reflected in the price of the system with the GPU). NVIDIA's GTX 750 Ti on the other hand uses less than 75W and doesn't even require a PCI-E power adapter, and it can still run most games at medium to high settings and 1080p. Either GPU is certainly worth considering, at least if you want to play games – and if you don't, just get the core system and you can always add a GPU at some future date.

Midrange Intel System Component Description Price CPU Core i5-4590 (4x3.3-3.7GHz, 6MB, 84W, 22nm) $200 Motherboard ASRock Z97 Anniversary $90 RAM ADATA 2x4GB DDR3-1866 CL10 1.5V $77 Storage Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB $84 SSD Crucial MX100 256GB $109 Case Antec Three Hundred Two $64 Power Supply Rosewill Capstone 450W 80 Plus Gold $60 Subtotal   $684 GPU (Optional) Sapphire Radeon R9 270X 2GB $190 GPU (Alternative) Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB $138 Total with GPU   $874

The Intel system this round ends up costing about $50 more than the AMD setup, thanks to a more expensive CPU and motherboard. There are ways to keep the prices closer, but overall the i5-4590 strikes a good balance of price and performance. It's about $25 less than the slightly faster i5-4690 but only around 3-5% slower, and unless you plan on overclocking it should offer everything you need. As we discussed in our recent CPU State of the Part, looking at overall system performance Intel's processors make a lot of sense for those that want a faster system.

The motherboard this time comes from ASRock and features Intel's latest Z97 chipset, and for the RAM we elected to go with a 1.5V kit of DDR3-1866 memory. While faster memory can help with the processor graphics on AMD's APUs, for Intel's CPUs the HD 4600 is usually limited by other factors than bandwidth. The same caveats about the storage components apply here as well, but if you're looking for alternatives the Samsung EVO 840 250GB is generally slightly faster than the Crucial MX100 while costing about $20 more.

The case for our Intel setup is an Antec Three Hundred Two, which is another popular option. Optional graphics choices can add a boost to gaming performance if you need it, but again a faster GPU could easily be added later on. If you're sure you won't want to add a dedicated GPU later, you can also save money on the PSU by going with the 300W Seasonic we used in our budget PC guide.

On either system, it's of course possible to go for a smaller micro-ATX case and motherboard. The prices are typically comparable and these days the only thing you're really sacrificing are expansion options, but considering many people don't run anything more than a hard drive and SSD along with a GPU, you really don't miss much. For mATX cases, you might like the Rosewill Line-M or Silverstone SST-PS07B. As far as mATX motherboards, the ASRock Z97M Pro4 would work well for the Intel platform, or for AMD the Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H will even save you a few bucks compared to the MSI board we listed above.

As before, we've elected to leave out the OS, keyboard, mouse, and display; these are all commodity items and most people have existing accessories they can carry over from an old PC. You can always use a free OS like Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux, whereas Windows will generally add $100 to the total. As far as displays go, I'm a sucker for larger displays and I've been using 30" LCDs for most of the past decade – one of the best investments I've ever made in terms of computer hardware! For a good midrange display, I'd give serious consideration to the 27" 2560x1440 panels that start at around $300; if you don't want something that large (or expensive), there are also plenty of 23-24" IPS/VA displays for around $150.

Finally, let's quickly talk about pre-built systems and why I don't generally recommend them. Really, it comes down to one thing: the refusal of the big OEMs and system builders to deliver a competitively priced desktop that includes at least a good quality 250/256GB SSD (or even a 128GB SSD). $500 will get you a Core i5 or AMD A10 processor, 4-8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and whatever case and power supply the OEM uses. Generally speaking, you get fewer features, lower quality parts, and a less attractive design – but you do get a valid Windows license along with a low-end keyboard and mouse.

We could easily take the above systems and remove the SSD and drop down to a 1TB HDD to save $140. Using lower quality motherboards can shave off another $30-$50. Wrap things up by using a cheaper case and power supply (another $50 saved) and guess what you have: a less desirable system for one, with a base price of $450 or so. Buy a Windows license and you basically have the equivalent of a pre-built system.

It's not that OEM systems are necessarily terrible, but it's the age old story: you get what you pay for. I for one would much rather have a decent SSD, motherboard, case, and power supply. You can pay a system integrator to put something together as well, but even then your choice of parts is often limited and the prices are typically higher than if you DIY.

Israel launches air strikes into Gaza after Palestinian rockets are fired at the end of a three-day truce.

The United States has launched two additional air strikes on Islamist militants in Iraq, who are targeting Kurdish forces defending the northern city of Irbil.

On Friday afternoon, a US district judge for the Northern District of California rejected a settlement proposed by four major tech companies—Google, Apple, Intel, and Adobe—in a class-action lawsuit over improper hiring practices. The four companies were accused of conspiring to keep each others' employees from being poached, thus limiting their employees' potential salaries and stunting job opportunities.

A group of employees sued the four companies for this practice back in 2011, and in April of this year, the companies agreed to settle the case and pay back $324.5 million to more than 60,000 workers that ended up in the class. Today, however, US District Judge Lucy Koh said the settlement amount was not enough and "falls below the range of reasonableness."

The case has been followed closely, not least because a number of private e-mail exchanges between the heads of these major companies had been made public. With the earlier promise of a jury trial, it looked for a time like even more salient details would come to light. In April, The New York Times found one e-mail in which Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wrote to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, "If you hire a single one of these people, that means war.” In other court documents, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Jobs that a Google recruiter who had solicited an Apple employee would be fired.

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Afghan presidential rivals, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, agree to form a united government. after months of feuding.

Sixty years ago, Amir Mehdi was betrayed by his Italian companions and denied glory at the summit of Pakistan's K2 mountain.

Images from August 15 at three different wavelengths, and one image from August 29 showing the third eruption. Imke de Pater and Katherine de Kleer, UC Berkeley

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system, so it’s not a shock that astronomers captured several eruptions while their telescopes were trained on the satellite. However, the three eruptions were uncommonly massive (among the 10 largest seen there) and occurred within the span of a couple of weeks—eruptions of this class are only thought to occur every other year, on average. Researchers may be able to glean enough from these images to help us get to the bottom of a couple of Ionian mysteries.

Io’s prodigious volcanic output is the result of tidal heating—gravitational squeezing as a result of its slightly oblong orbit around Jupiter, along with some tugs by fellow Jovian moons. Though Io is roughly the same size as Earth’s own Moon, the flow of heat from its core toward its surface is roughly 30 times greater than that of Earth. As a result, there’s usually at least one active volcano whenever astronomers observe Io. In fact, a huge lava lake some 200 kilometers across, called Loki Patera, is usually visible to infrared telescopes. On thirteen occasions between 1978 and 2006, unusually large eruptions called outbursts were observed. Three more have now been added to that number.

Jupiter’s magnetic field holds a curious torus (or ring donut if you’re hungry) of plasma believed to originate from Io’s volcanism. A new Japanese space telescope, launched in September, had been scheduled to spend some time studying that plasma torus, and so several ground-based telescopes had begun monitoring Io’s volcanic activity in August. On August 15, a telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii recorded two bright infrared spots in the far south of Io, which hasn’t been known for this kind of activity.

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A UN delegation is in the Libyan capital Tripoli to try and help bring to an end the hostilities between rival militias.

Every year, heck...every month, Linux is adopted by more companies and organizations as an important if not primary component of their enterprise platform. And the more serious the hardware platform, the more likely it is to be running Linux. 60% of servers, 70% of Web servers and 95% of all supercomputers are Linux-based! more>>

Google Play One week after President Obama signed a phone-unlocking bill into law, T-Mobile has responded by becoming the first American carrier to launch its own unlocking app. Modestly titled Device Unlock, the app debuted on Friday in the Google Play store, though it comes with one major limitation: It only unlocks the Samsung Galaxy Avant, a lower-specced offering that launched in late July exclusively on T-Mobile.

The app offers two unlock options for Avant owners: temporary, for the sake of international GSM use, or permanent. Choosing either option sends a SIM unlock request to T-Mobile, as opposed to automatically unlocking. A glance at T-Mobile's unlock FAQ, which appears unchanged since before last week's bill was signed into law, clarifies that requested phones won't unlock unless they've been paid in full and haven't been reported stolen, among other requirements.

As such, the app merely streamlines a process that T-Mobile had already put into place well before a deadline of February 2015. Confusingly, Google Play advertises the app as compatible with any T-Mobile phone in a user's account, despite the app's current Avant-only status, which leads us to believe it will eventually support other T-Mobile handsets (seeing as it does little more than report a user's phone information to the unlock department). Until that changes, the app will probably continue to be bombed with the kinds of negative reviews it's already receiving from non-Avant users.

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Seth Kroll, Wyss Institute

As if a brain-like processing chip weren't bad enough news for us humans, this week's edition of Science also describes a robot that, after being laid out as a flat sheet, can fold itself into the appropriate shape to take its on-board electronics for a walk.

Why would we possibly want self-assembling, flat-packed electronics of this kind? The authors of the Science paper, who are part of a Harvard/MIT collaboration, offer two reasons. First, it's much easier to assemble something as a planar surface. With the right layers in place, it's simple to cut them into the appropriate shapes and then embed the electronics where they're needed, since there's no awkward internal spaces to deal with. The second reason is that it's easy to transport things when they're shaped like a sheet. Since the devices can assemble themselves, they can be shipped to any destination and used without any hassle or high-level technical knowledge.

Of course, having a good idea and actually knowing how to create a self-assembling device are two different things. Fortunately, the ability to construct elaborate three-dimensional items from a flat sheet is a solved problem, thanks to origami. Software like Origamizer can even determine how to cut and fold a sheet in order to produce a specified three-dimensional structure.

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The World Health Organisation says a co-ordinated international response can stop the spread of Ebola, as it declares the outbreak in West Africa an international emergency.

Gamma group customer logs found in the leaked trove that was posted online by hackers. Gerald Rich/ProPublica

Software created by the controversial UK-based Gamma Group International was used to spy on computers that appear to be located in the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia, Iran, and Bahrain, according to a leaked trove of documents analyzed by ProPublica.

It's not clear whether the surveillance was conducted by governments or private entities. Customer e-mail addresses in the collection appeared to belong to a German surveillance company, an independent consultant in Dubai, the Bosnian and Hungarian Intelligence services, a Dutch law enforcement officer, and the Qatari government.

The leaked files—which were posted online by hackers—are the latest in a series of revelations about how state actors including repressive regimes have used Gamma's software to spy on dissidents, journalists, and activist groups.

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Warner Bros.

According to a report from TV Wise, Babylon 5 showrunner J. Michael Straczynski will shortly begin work on a rebooted big-screen version of his 1990s sci-fi TV series. Straczynski made the announcement at San Diego Comic-Con last week.

Babylon 5’s pilot episode originally aired in 1993, with the series beginning its regular run almost a year later as a foundational component of the now-defunct Prime Time Entertainment Network. The show lacked the production budget of its contemporary rival Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (which allegedly lifted some or all of its core concepts directly from Straczynski’s original—and rejected—Babylon 5 pitch meeting with Paramount). Still, it attracted enough of an audience to accomplish a noteworthy feat: Babylon 5 became the only non-Star Trek science fiction show on American television to reach its series completion without being cancelled. Not until 2004’s Battlestar Galactica reboot would another non-Star Trek show earn the same distinction.

After Babylon 5 ended in 1998, Straczynski (usually referred to simply by his initials, "JMS") tried multiple times to bring a B5 movie to theaters. The most recent attempt in 2004 came the closest, with a completed script and some preproduction work underway, but without financial backing from Warner Bros. the project had to be abandoned.

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Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games trilogy, has signed the letter condemning Amazon, even though she does not publish with Hachette.

Authors affected by Amazon's contract dispute with publisher Hachette have started to band together against the online retailer, reported The New York Times on Thursday. More than 900 authors have signed a letter condemning Amazon for "using writers as hostages in its negotiations," referring to Amazon's choices to keep low stock of certain Hachette titles and taking weeks to ship them as the two companies battle over e-book prices.

The effort was spearheaded by 58-year-old Douglas Preston, a writer whose thrillers have been published by Hachette. Preston reports to the Times that Amazon has contacted him repeatedly, trying to get him to stop his campaign against the company and to see its side of the argument, but Preston will not be silenced.

Amazon has uncharacteristically tried to defend itself with forum posts over the last few weeks. First, the Books team stated that its decision to keep low Hachette stock is barely affecting its business, then it followed that up with a math-based argument for mandating that Hachette charge a lower cover price overall.

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