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Chances are that with the recent release of Nvidia's RTX pixel-pushers and the associated shifting in graphics card prices, you might be looking at acquiring a new monitor. LG seems to definitely think that bigger is better, as it's just pulled back the curtain on the 38GL950G and 49WL95C. ...Read more...

G'afternoon, folks. Christmas is approaching fast, and meanwhile I'm having trouble believing we're into December already, sheesh. This year was a bit of a blur, probably owing to the large number of CPU and graphics card releases. No matter now, you and I should be considering offering sweet hardware to our friends and loved ones, right? Here are today's top picks for that purpose. ...Read more...

If there's a title awarded for "most troubled Windows update," then Windows 10 version 1809 is a good candidate. Comically known as the October 2018 update, the latest version of Windows 10 is now widely available to users who manually click the "check for updates" button in Windows' Settings app. ...Read more...

Here's a topic that we haven't talked about in a while. The JEDEC standards body has taken a pen to the JESD253 HBM standard, scratched out some figures, and put in higher, juicier ones. Enter the JESD253B revision, whose main claim to fame is support for 12-high TSV (through-silicon via) stacks. Along with that improvement, the total per-stack transfer rate is now 307 GB/s, up from JESD253's 256 GB/s.

The mention of the ThinkPad name tends to bring to mind sturdy laptops with great keyboards and an eye towards practicality over style. Lenovo's just used the upgrade wand on the its affordable L-series ThinkPads, and the results are the L390 and L390 Yoga portables. The machines reportedly come with Whiskey Lake CPU options on their higher-end configurations.

There's a proverbial rash of big-and-affordable monitors these days, and we can only be thankful for it. The latest player to join the field is the LG 32QK500-W. Let's take a good look at this 32" display. ...Read more...

Remember the Epic Store announcement a a couple weeks ago, and its developer-friendly revenue split? Competition for a chunk of Steam's pie is fiercer than ever, because now Discord has joined the gang of companies trying to undercut Valve's service. ...Read more...

A lot of talk around here revolves around powerful parts suitable for your latest personal computer, phone, workstation, or server. That list doesn't cover all the use cases for a juicy, tasty chunk of processing power. Enter the latest member in the company's Jetson family of "system-on-modules," the Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier. ...Read more...

Who could choose?

While the traditional clamshell laptop form factor has always been king, one could say that the future is convertible. Samsung certainly seems to think that way, if one were to judge by the recently announced nifty Notebook 9 Pen fold-back convertibles. ...Read more...

G'afternoon, good gerbils. Recently I moved over to an NVMe SSD, and I can tell you a couple things. The first is that for regular usage, it'll do very little for you compared to the vast majority of SATA drives. The second thing that I can tell you is that when you do get it going (in my case, for heavy-duty VM work, wrangling big Windows images, and handling tons of small files at once), it's going to set your heart positively alight. But enough chit-chat, we're here for deals, right? Here's today's selection. ...Read more...

LG wants to take a load off your shoulders—quite literally, in fact. The company just announced the latest iterations in its Gram lineup of light laptops. There are two models: one is a standard-form-factor laptop with a 17" display, while the other is a 2-in-1 convertible with a 14" screen. Don't let the apparent size of the larger model discourage you, though—LG says that model fits a 17" display in a 15.6"-class body. We'll start with that one.

A fair day, fine fans of Final Fantasy XV. If you happen to own one of Nvidia's RTX graphics cards, you're in for a treat. The company's GeForce 417.35 drivers add support for DLSS (deep-learning super-sampling) to Square Enix's magnum opus.If you're wondering what all the hubbub is about, Nvidia DLSS lets RTX graphics cards render a game at a lower-than-native resolution before using a trained neural network to upscale the image to what it "thinks" the final image should look like. ...Read more...

Many of us often build our PCs with a "less is more" concept, seeing how little hardware we need to make our work or gaming happen. There are times, however, when only more is more. For those occasions, Gigabyte's brought out its Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce motherboard. ...Read more...

Do you want one of the nicer phones, but the constant removal of microSD slots and headphone jacks is keeping you down? Meet the Nokia 8.1, the brand's rather attractive new high-midrange handset. ...Read more...

Greetings, fair gerbils. Roughly every three-to-six months, I go and get my back and shoulders put into place again. Life at a desk takes it toll, and being naturally tense doesn't help (factory defect, I'm sure). The sweet release of wound-up muscles and actually being able to enjoy the full range of my arms and neck's motion are as good a panacea for stress as any, and it's something I heartily recommend to anyone who regularly spends hours sitting down. But enough talk for now, you're here for the finest PC hardware deals around. Here are today's picks. ...Read more...

Apps? We ain't got no apps! We don't need no apps! I don't have to show you any stinking apps!

Despite some missteps, there's little argument that Windows 10 is improving with time (some would say, like fine wine). Microsoft just published the Windows Insider Preview build 18298, and there are more than a few goodies in store.Although not all relevant in the grand scheme of things, the most obvious outward-looking change is a new icon for Explorer, now with bolder colors and a slightly adjusted design. ...Read more...

Do you find yourself looking at your blinkenlit build and disliking the gaping void left by unfilled RAM slots? Corsair is here to help with its Vengeance RGB Pro Light Enhancement Kit. ...Read more...

It's a pretty quiet news day, but over yonder in the Plains of Rumors there have been echoes of the words "Nvidia" and "RTX." Two rumors in particular made our ears prick up, so we figure you'd like a look too. Please, do keep the salt shaker handy.The first rumor we've spotted is probably the juiciest one of the two. It appears that laptops packing Nvidia RTX graphics chips might be peeking just around the corner. Twitter leaker @TUM_APISAK was browsing benchmark databases and spotted ...Read more...

Intel exec Murthy Renduchintala recently spoke at length about the company's future at the 39th Nasdaq Investor Conference, and the talk has been summed up in a transcript spotted by Anandtech. Renduchintala had much to say about the company's continuing plans for its 10-nm process technology and lifted the lid a bit on its plans for 7-nm production.As TSMC has begun volume production of chips on its 7-nm FinFET process (roughly comparable to Intel's 10-nm process in its claims for density) and Samsung claims to have won the race to EUV insertion with its own similarly-dense 7LPP node ...Read more...

Stop, it's HAMR time! (Come on guys, it's a slow day.) Remember the fancy heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) tech drive makers keep talking up? Seagate says it now has fully armed and operational 16-TB Exos HAMR 3.5" drives in the testing phase, apparently beating Western Digital and its MAMR drives to the punch. ...Read more...

What does it mean that, nearly two years later, I'm still more proud of this than any of my other work?

You may remember the Always Connected PCs we talked up a while ago. Those lean notebooks promised competent computing performance paired with constant cellular connectivity and particularly long battery life. Those machines were based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835—in other words, a smartphone SoC for laptop work. Qualcomm has now decided to up the ante with its next designed-for-laptops chip, the Snapdragon 8cx.The new Kryo 495 CPU is an 8-core big-little ...Read more...

Hello, folks. It's a somewhat peaceful day at TR HQ. There's an incoming review of a sweet motherboard, but generally there's not much going on in the hardware world. It's a good time as any to hunt down some discounted bits of kit, and we've picked out the best for you. ...Read more...

Are you planning on a Coffee Lake build and have a penchant for massive overclocking? EVGA would like to show you its Z390 Dark motherboard. If the massive heatsinks atop it weren't enough of a clue, this circuit slab is packed to the gills with power-handling goodies, and pro overclocker Luumi has already used it to break the eight-core Cinebench R15 world record by pushing a Core i9-9900K to 6.987 GHz. If you bleed liquid helium and live for overclocking records, read on.First up, the company says there's a 17-phase VRM sitting underneath all those heat sinks. The spice flows into it from a pair of eight-pin EPS connectors. There are only two DIMM slots sitting atop the CPU socket, likely to keep ...Read more...

Qualcomm's annual tech summit is underway this week in Hawaii, and the term that emerged from presenters' mouths every two seconds there was "5G." The next generation of mobile connectivity is set to arrive soon, and Qualcomm wants to ensure that designers of next-gen flagship phones choose its wares for that task—in this case, the Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform.That "mobile platform" is actually composed of two chips: the brand-new, 7-nm Snapdragon 855 SoC and Qualcomm's already-announced X50 5G modem. The Snapdragon 855 SoC is the star of the show here, so let's talk about it. The CPU portion of the chip has eight next-gen ...Read more...

With the thousands of laptops on offer these days, you'd think it would be easy to find that Goldilocks model that covers all the bases while offering a quality build. Machines fitting that exact description aren't all that plentiful, though, so the updated Razer Blade Stealth is a welcome sight. ...Read more...

This caption is dicey.

Epic Games is historically known for its Unreal Engine and more recently for a teeny-weeny game you may know called Fortnite. The company is now making a big play in the realm of digital downloads with its upcoming Epic Games Store, and it has Steam squarely in its crosshairs. ...Read more...

Hullo, good folks. I bet you're dying to know if the meaty RTX speed boost that Nvidia promised for the incoming Battlefield V update will pan out. We're rather curious too and meant to start looking into that, but the update's been delayed. We'll eventually see if smooth gaming with realistic reflections is feasible at decent frame rates, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here's the collection of deals we lovingly hunted down for you. ...Read more...

Citing anonymous sources, Windows Central reports that Redmond is forging ahead with a plan to replace or retool the Edge browser in Windows 10 with a Chromium-powered replacement. The project is apparently codenamed "Anaheim," though there's no telling whether Microsoft's new browser will keep or ditch the Edge branding. ...Read more...

Nvidia's letting the news cannon loose today, and the latest piece of information from the green team regards the release of the GeForce 417.22 WHQL drivers. The new release adds support for the incoming Battlefield V update and its much-needed improvements to RTX performance. There are a few other goods in store, too.The 417.22 release adds support for Rico Rodriguez's adventures in Just Cause 4 , as well as Nvidia Ansel and Nvidia Highlights mojo for Insurgency: Sandstorm . Those trolling the Battle for Azeroth in World of Warcraft will be happy to know that the updated Nvidia driver is ...Read more...

Our early performance testing for DirectX Raytracing effects in Battlefield V suggested that the tradeoff between frame rates and image quality with Nvidia's GeForce RTX cards was quite dear. We didn't write off the tech at the time, though, because a subsequent interview with DICE by Eurogamer suggested there were plenty of bugs to squash and plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick for RTX performance. We're glad we didn't, because today, Nvidia previewed just how much of an RTX speed-up gamers can expect from the first major update to Battlefield V....Read more...

Nvidia's Turing graphics cards may cost a pretty penny, but few people are going to argue with the performance of their massive arrays of tensor, RT, and CUDA cores. The green team thinks you may want even more, and it's just let loose its big gun: the Nvidia Titan RTX. ...Read more...

Every single time we write up a gaming monitor, there's always someone that says "oh this monitor would be great if it had X." Well, buckle up, then. Asus just came out with the ROG Strix XG32VQR, a display with a specs list as long as a CVS receipt. ...Read more...

Having a desktop PC in your office ensures you can easily delve into high-performance computing. In today's mobile world, though, some folks' primary machines may be laptops without the discrete graphics power needed to run demanding games or visualization apps. For those who want the best of both worlds, Sapphire's GearBox Thunderbolt 3 eGFX enclosure could prove an interesting new option. ...Read more...

Hello, indeed.

Real-time ray tracing may be the hottest buzzword of the moment in high-end graphics. The folks at UL Benchmarks (formerly Futuremark) want you to be able to test how big of a hit ray-traced effects will cause when you buy the graphics cards of today and tomorrow with its upcoming 3DMark Port Royal benchmark. ...Read more...

Hey there, folks. Here's today bit of irrelevant trivia. I've recently joined the rechargeable batteries club. See, ever since I started playing the metal, I got me a nice Line6 Relay G30 wireless pack. Problem is, that thing devours batteries like a politician handles a pork barrel. To scratch that itch and help the environment a little, I've enlisted a Golisi S4 smart charger and some Amazon high-capacity batteries. The charger is super-nice, and I'm eager to try the batteries on the G30 to see if they work as well as Eneloops. Oh, right, today's deals. Here they are. ...Read more...

Antlion Audio's ModMic can turn any pair of headphones into a high-quality headset, but that add-on has one unfortunate drawback: it adds another cable to any existing wires running back to its user's PC. The obvious solution to this problem is to get rid of the cord entirely, and that's just what the company has done with its ModMic Wireless. This add-on mic uses Qualcomm's aptX protocol to deliver 16-bit, 48-KHz low-latency audio with all the freedom of wireless connectivity. ...Read more...

One subtlety of the Windows 10 October Update (also known as version 1809) that may have been lost among its many growing pains is that it's the first widely-released version of Windows 10 that requires the use of Windows Modern Drivers (an initiative that might also go by the name of Universal Windows Drivers, or UWDs). The benefit of WMDs, according to Microsoft, is that a device maker such as Intel can write a base driver that can be certified and deployed to every machine with a given piece of hardware—including OEM systems—via Windows Update.OEMs can still add customization of their own to a WMD, but those customizations are the only thing an OEM is responsible for validating. That way, Microsoft can ...Read more...

Google's contract-free Project Fi wanted to be a refreshingly simple kind of cellular service when it launched back in 2015. Carrier partnerships with both Sprint and T-Mobile allowed Project Fi subscribers to get the best network connectivity wherever they were, and a simple pricing model of $20 per month for baseline service and $10 for every gigabyte of data offered clarity about just what subscribers were getting for their money. Project Fi has apparently been a success, as Mountain View is graduating the service to Google Fi and expanding the handsets it'll work with today. ...Read more...

The world can always use more free, quick-to-run, cross-platform benchmarks for the latest methods in graphics programming, and Basemark is improving its benchmark utility for those who want a repeatable, common frame of reference for graphics performance across devices. Basemark GPU 1.1 adds support for the DirectX 12 API, as well as a cleaner launcher, Flatpak distribution for Linux users, and other minor fixes. ...Read more...

I want to go to there.

Elgato's Cam Link dongle is a handy way to turn any camera with clean HDMI output capability into a platform for streaming video, but some might have found the original Cam Link's 1920x1080 maximum resolution restrictive. That all changes today with the Cam Link 4K, whose upgraded internals can push 3840x2160 video at 30 FPS in addition to the 1920x1080-at-60-FPS that the original Cam Link offered. ...Read more...

Howdy folks! Black Friday and Cyber Monday are gone, but we still have deals to bite into. Just like turkey and gravy are juicy and tasty in the days following Thanksgiving, there's a few filling deals to be had on this fine Tuesday. We've picked out the tastiest morsels just for your pleasure. ...Read more...

Nvidia has released a minor driver update this morning in preparation for Darksiders III. Version 417.01 gets GeForce owners Game Ready for that title, and it also fixes a few bugs....Read more...

Happy Cyber Monday, gerbils. The deals just don't stop coming this holiday season, and we're filtering through the mountain of dross out there to find the gold within. Keep refreshing this post for more deals as we find them.There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with ...Read more...

Hey, everybody. Hope you're shaking off the turkey torpor this morning, because we're going to be perusing hundreds of PC hardware deals and bringing you the cream of the crop. Keep refreshing this post throughout the morning to see what we've found.There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with ...Read more...