The Tech Report

In case you haven't heard, Intel hosted an event for the press today that it called "Data-Centric Innovation Day." The primary purpose of the event was to promote a bunch of new products: the Agilex FPGAs, new SSDs, new Ethernet adapters, and most critically, the Cascade Lake family of Xeon CPUs. We weren't privy to any press materials before the presentation, so this is just a quick overview of all the new hardware on display today. ...Read more...

Can you believe we're already three months into 2019? Somebody pull the brakes on this train. Of course, that's impossible, so we're left barreling at full speed toward Computex at the end of May. You can put your money down that all sorts of products will be previewed or even will premiere at the show in Taiwan, and we wager that few are more anticipated than those coming from AMD. We all have our own educated guesses at AMD's near-future plans, but the Taiwan External Trade and Development Council (TAITRA) may have tipped the company's hand a bit.

G'afternoon, folks. it's a quiet day around here, but things are bound to heat up soon enough. Intel has a datacenter event going, and there are more than good chances that the company will announce sweet, juicy, high-powered hardware. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, take a gander at our selection of hot deals of the day. ...Read more...

Except for their smell and high-pressure bowels, ferrets are amazing pets. I'll never own one again.

Back when Valve announced SteamVR four years ago, instead of making its own headset, the company gave its blessing to HTC's Vive. Now, it seems Valve is ready to get into the head-mounted display business itself. The former game studio teased something called the Index on Steam this weekend with the tag line "Upgrade your experience." ...Read more...

Hello, folks. This is where I'd dispense pleasantries and some daily life story... if I had one right now. It's been one of those days that doesn't seem to want to end, so I'm sticking to let loose the deal cannon and letting the figures speak for themselves. Today's a good one for discounts, boys and girls. ...Read more...

You know, Eurocom sells a whole bunch of laptops. The company doesn't exclusively offer brick-like melee weapons made from gloriously overpowered desktop hardware. That's all we seem to talk about from Eurocom, though, possibly because hilariously-powerful laptops are fun and sort of interesting. It's been a while since we checked in with Eurocom, and so it goes that today we're talking about the Sky X4C Mobile Supercomputer. ...Read more...

That reminds me, TR BBQ XVI is just 135 days away. Culinarily speaking, bones in ribs count as sticks, right?

Patriot may be best known for its RAM products, but its M.2 SSDs have been a hit around the TR labs for quite a while, too. The component maker has expanded its SSD family by four with the announcement of the Viper VPN100 series of gumsticks with big, meaty heatsinks. ...Read more...

I hereby inaugurate "Sometimes a Thing Gets Broke, Can't Be Fixed Day"

Good afternoon, gerbils. My flu appears to have finally broken, but I still feel like I need about three days' worth of extra sleep to make up for it. Nevertheless, I'm going to try and hit the gym later today and run some to see if my body starts waking up again. Being sick mostly doesn't stop me from hunting down sweet PC hardware deals, though. Here are today's top picks. ...Read more...

Play over a hundred ad-free games downloaded and installed directly to your device in exchange for a monthly fee. Is it Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass? Well, yes, but actually no. This time around, we're talking about Apple Arcade, a service the iDevice maker announced as part of its "Show Time" event yesterday. ...Read more...

Back in 2014, we reviewed Asus' then-new ROG Swift PG278Q monitor. That was a 27" display that supported a 144-Hz refresh rate and Nvidia's recently-released G-Sync technology. We found it to be absolutely fantastic aside from the eye-watering price, and to this day many enthusiasts consider it to be among the best gaming displays. It's getting hard to find now though, and its supposed replacement the PG278QR had some serious image quality issues. So, Asus seems to be bringing back the PG278Q with a new release known as the ROG Swift PG278QE. ...Read more...

Ugh, man, this sucks. It's March, Spring has already started, and I've got a clogged nose, aching eyes, muscle pain, and generally feel like I was hit by a truck. Yep, it's the flu. That thrice-darned virus is always waiting to see if you catch a little too much cold, ready to pounce at a moment's notice. Right now my diet is paracetamol and vitamin C. Nevertheless, you loving gerbils have an expectation that there will be hot hardware deals post, and here they are. Get buyin'! ...Read more...

Intel's been blowing the whistle on the Graphics Hype Train quite a bit lately. The company teased its coming-in-2020 discrete graphics a while back, and more recently it's invited enthusiasts to go on an Odyssey. During GDC 2019, the world's biggest chip manufacturer took to its the Intel Graphics Twitter feed and announced an early-access program for its revamped Graphics Command Center—a replacement for its aging IGP control panel. Check out the over-the-top announcement video asking Intel GPU owners to "guide the future of graphics for a billion people."...Read more...

Dat crust.

Across internet forums like our own, you'll hear folks saying that Nvidia is moving away from the low-margin gaming market toward the professional and HPC market at full steam. It's hard to tell if that's happening, but the company's latest GTC keynote was over two and a half hours of discussion with barely a mention of gaming—despite CEO Jensen Huang stating that "without Quake, Nvidia wouldn't exist." Nvidia's latest driver release adds fuel to that argument, as driver version 419.67 is the first "Creator Ready" release.

When people talk about Noctua coolers, which one comes to mind? You probably think about the little L9, the huge C14, or even the mighty D15. Noctua's original CPU cooler was the U12, though. It was one of the first 120-mm tower coolers in general, and it set the stage for what would become the all-but-standard form factor for enthusiast CPU air coolers with its high performance and low noise. Now that the company has its new A12 fans out of their five-year development period, it's time to update the U12, and thus we now have the NH-U12A. ...Read more...

Greetings folks! I have to rush the pleasantries today. It's been a bad day full of bureaucracy, and although it's past 7 pm around here, I feel like I haven't really done anything yet besides running around like a headless chicken. I did take the time to collect and filter the finest PC hardware deals for your perusal. There's a ton of great picks today, let's get going. ...Read more...

One of my longest lasting scars came courtesy of an overly protective guineafowl parent.

As I noted yesterday, the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco just kicked off. However, yesterday was also the first day of Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference just down the road in San Jose. Green GPU giant CEO Jensen Huang opened the show with a nearly three-hour keynote during which not much came to light regarding new hardware. There was one pretty interesting tidbit, though: Jetson Nano, a $99 single-board computer sporting a CUDA-capable Tegra SoC. ...Read more...

Nvidia's Turing graphics cards came along with quite a few new technologies. The big one of course is their RTX real-time ray-tracing feature, but Deep-Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) has gotten its share of time in the spotlight as well. However, perhaps the most interesting technology to toddle along with Nvidia's Turing architecture is the one that's been mostly overlooked: variable-rate shading (VRS). ...Read more...

Greetings, folks! There isn't much time for pleasantries today, as I need to head out for a weekend trip to Lisbon. I'll be sure to enjoy the sun and eat some tasty Pasteis de Belém while I'm there. Mmmm, I can taste the eggs and sugar already. That's going to damage my diet a little, but... the things we do for food. Anyhow, here's today's selection of PC deals. It's a particularly good crop, methinks. ...Read more...

PC hardware and computing

Microsoft, what are you even doing? Two interesting-but-probably-unrelated bits of PC gaming news came out of the Redmond complex early this week. The most exciting part is that Halo: The Master Chief Collection is not only coming to the Windows Store, but in fact it's also hitting Steam. Most folks anticipated that when Halo finally did make the jump, it would be a Windows Store exclusive, so seeing it show up on most PC gamers' selected storefront is a treat to say the least. ...Read more...

Hey, remember way back in March of last year when we told you about Toshiba's then-upcoming datacenter SSD offerings? The last of those, the 2.5" XD5, is finally making its way to market. These drives use the same 64-layer BiCS TLC flash as the company's fancier CD5 and CM5 series, as well as the already released XD5 M.2 drives. ...Read more...

Greetings, my good gerbils. My quest for weight loss has been going well—184 lbs and dropping (at 5' 11" with wide shoulders). I've never been really fat, but over time I built up a little belly and love handles that are quite unpleasant. Although I've been hitting the gym mostly for maintenance for a while, I decided to kick things up a notch and step up my running game and improve my diet. A lot of people will tell you that the battle for weight loss and/or body-building is won in the kitchen, and unfortunately they're absolutely correct. Now take a look at the PC hardware deals we collected for you while I go munch on some chicken. ...Read more...

If you're of the mind that 13.3" is too tiny and 15.6" is a bit bulky, then perhaps you'll take a liking to the just-right size of Asus' latest ZenBooks. The ZenBook 14 UX431 series are slim ultrabooks that Asus says strike a balance between "fast" and "flashy" without burning up your pocketbook. ...Read more...

My wife adores Garden Paws in large part because of the excellent screenshot tool.

Okay, gerbils. I promise, this is the last time I'll gush about Devil May Cry 5. It unlocked last night at 11:00pm CST, and having already pre-loaded it on Steam, I promptly ... spent all night and morning playing Warframe's new Buried Debt event. However, I intend to dive full-force into Capcom's new game today and spend most of the weekend on it. If you're bored at work and aching to get home and dive in, hold your horses, devil hunters: First, go grab the latest video drivers. We already talked about Nvidia's driver, but AMD has one ready for the game too with the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.3.1.

Season's greetings, good gerbils. I had a rather nasty RSI-induced event recently. My upper back has been pretty tightened up, and things came to a head a couple days ago when I felt the tip of my thumb going numb. Knowing the possible causes, I freaked out more than a little. One visit to my friendly chiropractor, and I'm now back on track for a good recovery. Keep in mind, folks, when you're dealing with anything involving muscles, tendons, and spine, don't wait too long before ringing up a professional. Anyways, here's today's selection of PC hardware deals. ...Read more...

Can you really call something a leak if the company released it on purpose? AMD's just released a slide deck for its investors, and buried in those slides are a few tiny nuggets of interesting information. Let's take a quick peek into the red team's path ahead. ...Read more...

A couple months ago, I teased an upcoming story about my brand new solar panel adventure. I'm happy to report that the system has now been up and running for almost a week. And dude, it's kind of blowing my mind. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that my full write up is at least a month out. I need more time to collect more data, and sun, before I tell my tale. I can't help but tease a little more, though...

A couple months ago, I teased an upcoming story about my brand new solar panel adventure. I'm happy to report that the system has now been up and running for almost a week. And dude, it's kind of blowing my mind. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that my full write up is at least a month out. I need more time to collect more data, and sun, before I tell my tale. I can't help but tease a little more, though...

They're back, baby.

Cinebench: Regardless what you think about the software, you know of it. It's ubiquitous in hardware reviews across the web because, if nothing else, it's extremely easy to automate. The version of Cinebench that you're likely to find in CPU reviews to date is Cinebench R15, released in September 2013. (Yeah, more than five years ago.) It's time for a new version, and Maxon has responded with Cinebench R20. ...Read more...

Devil May Cry 5 and Tom Clancy's The Division 2 are both really close to release, while Apex Legends is still burning up the player-count charts. I haven't played The Division 2 yet, but both of the others are killer games. Nvidia, never one to rest on its laurels, just released GeForce driver version 419.35 which, by no coincidence, is "Game Ready" for all three of the aforementioned titles.

Howdy folks. I've been catching up on the latest episodes The Grand Tour, and I'm having loads of fun. I particularly enjoyed the episode in China, which is funny by itself but also kind of mind-boggling. The country is still a bit of a mystery to most of us Westerners, and it's quite amazing to see how the massive infusions of cash are transformed into massive infrastructure. I'd definitely recommend you watch that one. In the meantime, take a gander at our selection of PC hardware deals. ...Read more...

Apparently, my name is derived from the Latin word "colto" and it means "to be a tool on reality TV"

The eagle-eyed laptop lovers over at NotebookCheck spotted a very interesting note at Dell's website. When inspecting the specifications of the G5 15 gaming laptop, the machine's USB Type-C port is labeled as "USB-C DisplayPort / USB-C Thunderbolt" with an asterisk after. Clicking that asterisk reveals the box below. ...Read more...

G'afternoon, folks. My tiny terror HTPC is now alive and well, and I'll be making excellent use of it by chewing through my gigantic backlog of movies and shows. I've gone the extra mile and slapped a Core i5-8600 in it in preparation for a future graphics card upgrade, and jeez, that thing is snappy. The Core i7-6700K in my main box suddenly feels a little inadequate. I must now upgrade. I should not have done this. Anyway, check out our selection of hardware deals....Read more...

We know that there were so many of you gerbils who were absolutely infatuated with the edgy gamer styling of recent cases but were put off by the lack of a 5.25" drive bay. Sharkoon comes to your rescue with the VG7-W mid-tower chassis.

It's done.

Folks who sift through our SSD deals every week will no doubt be familiar with the Micron 1100. That drive was primarily intended as an HDD replacement for OEMs building low-cost PCs, but it found its way into the channel as a high-value offering for folks who want a bunch of solid-state storage. The price per dollar might continue to improve considering Micron's latest offering, the 1300. ...Read more...

Planet Earth, Shortbread is not...