Techreport

Asus has stealthily launched a new monitor on us. The ROG Strix XG248Q is essentially a 24" version of the ROG Strix XG258Q. Like its bigger brother, the company's latest gaming display promises a scorching 240-Hz refresh rate along with FreeSync support and a blur-reduction mode. The monitor also has RGB LED lighting on the back, and you can use Asus' Aura software to sync it up with the rest of your system's lightshow. ...Read more...

Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi showed off all kinds of shiny new devices at a launch event in Shenzhen today, chief among them the Mi 8, the latest in the company's series of line of high-end Android handsets. Xiaomi says the glass-backed Mi 8 is the first Android phone with dual-frequency GPS (using the L1 and L5 bands) for finer-grained location and navigation services. The manufacturer also claims the special Mi 8 Explorer Edition is the first Android smartphone with 3D face recognition and a pressure-sensing fingerprint sensor below the display for authentication. The company also showed off the smaller Mi 8 SE, the first phone with Qualcomm's just-announced Snapdragon 710 upper-midrange SoC.

German blog WinFuture reports that Dell has been working on an ARM-powered Windows 10 device codenamed Januss since at least last summer, and possibly before. The site claims that Januss is part of a second wave of ARM Windows 10 devices coming later this year based on Qualcomm's as-yet-unannounced Snapdragon 850 SoC, and goes on to say that it will be a dual-screen handheld device of some sort with an LTE modem.There's a lot to unwrap here. Dell was purportedly working on a Windows 10 mobile device in the past called Stack . In concept, Stack was a phablet that you would set into a dock ...Read more...

We're working on a secret project in the TR labs that needed a microATX motherboard as a key component. Despite the wide range of hardware that's come through our doors over the years, though, we actually didn't have a single modern midi-mobo on hand to plug in as part of that project. It turns out high-end microATX motherboards are as rare as hens' teeth these days, too. EVGA is among the few companies still making enthusiast-friendly midsize boards, and the fine folks there came through for us with not one, but two such mobos. ...Read more...

Nom.

Good near-afternoon, gerbils! We're reeling from a busy week of feature articles. Our recent releases include a look at MSI's WS63 8SJ mobile workstation, a listen to Corsair's HS70 wireless headset, and of course, the summer 2018 edition of our world-renowned System Guide, written by yours truly. You should totally open those links in tabs for reading right after perusing our selection of hardware deals. ...Read more...

AMD may be preparing to fill out its second-gen Ryzen CPU lineup a bit more if an update to ASRock's CPU compatibility charts for its AB350M Pro4 motherboard is any indication. The company tipped off four new CPUs that might launch soon: two likely quad-core parts and two energy-efficient models with six or eight cores.I say "likely" because the compatibility chart only gives us the data I've gathered above, but it's easy to guess ...Read more...

Nature enthusiasts wet their finger and put it in the air to get a sense of the wind's direction. PC hardware enthusiasts can look to AAA game releases to get a similar feeling for an upcoming video card driver release. AMD's latest Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.5.2 bucks this trend, since it doesn't add optimizations for any new or existing games or applications. The red graphics team marked this release as optional and instead focused on bug fixes.

The annual Hot Chips conference is where the industry gathers to hear deep dives about the highest-performing silicon for a range of applications, and Nvidia appears poised to present information about its next gaming graphics chip at 2018's symposium. The conference will run from August 20 to August 21 this year, and part of the proceedings on day one of the event include a presentation by the green team called "Nvidia's Next Generation Mainstream GPU," given by vice-president of GPU ASIC engineering Stuart Oberman.That date suggests Nvidia will tease or launch its next-generation gaming chip earlier in the summer, a possibility corroborated by reports from Tom's Hardware that the green team plans to launch purported Turing ...Read more...

Last year we told you about HP's Omen X laptop, a high-end piece of kit designed to compete with other desktop-replacement-style gaming laptops. HP also sells regular Omen laptops without the "X" marker that indicates range-topping status. The 15.6" model in that line, known simply as the Omen 15, just got a major refresh. HP's pumped it up with GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q graphics and Coffee Lake CPUs. ...Read more...

Intel and Micron's 3D Xpoint non-volatile memory has proven a unique bridge between NAND and DRAM in the storage hierarchy. Today, Intel is bringing the persistent, low-latency characteristics of 3D Xpoint to DIMM slots with a product called Optane DC Persistent Memory. Intel says Optane DC Persistent Memory sticks will be available in capacities up to 512 GB per module, versus about 128 GB in today's largest DIMMs using DDR4 SDRAM. With Optane DIMMs, Intel claims its servers will be able to employ up to 3 TB of non-volatile yet lighting-fast memory per socket for crunching the huge data sets businesses have gathered for analysis in today's world. ...Read more...

Cooler Master's MasterCase H500P got a lot of hype leading up to its launch in the last quarter of 2017, but that excitement turned into disappointment for some when reviewers lampooned the case's loose trim and disappointing airflow characteristics. The company addressed both of those concerns with a Mesh White version of that case earlier this year. The MasterCase H500M takes the concept more upmarket with four tempered-glass panels and a choice between solid and perforated front fascias. ...Read more...

On June 8, it will have been 40 years since Intel launched the 8086—a processor so important, so formative, that we still use the term "x86" to describe Intel-compatible CPUs to this day. To celebrate the occasion, Intel is purportedly launching a special edition Core i7-8086K CPU. This news comes from Videocardz, who found listings for the new chip at retailers in Canada, Russia, and Italy (although the Canadian and Italian listings have since been removed). ...Read more...

Pretty much every mobile VR platform runs on a smartphone SoC in one way or the other. The most popular implementations of Samsung's Gear VR and Google's Daydream platforms strap entire smartphones onto users' faces, and HTC's Vive Focus and Oculus' Go are built around Qualcomm processors. The San Diego-based chipmaker hopes its new XR1 SoC can help it secure its footing as the leader in silicon for mobile VR and AR, a broad product category it calls "XR." ...Read more...

Some days' stock photos continue to be harder to source than others.

The turn-of-the-20th-century architect Louis Sullivan famously stated that "form ever follows function." He might be surprised at some of the products that cross our news desk. Still, some products are out there for those who'd like to sacrifice neither form nor function. Case in point: Patriot's Viper RGB LED memory. This family of DIMMs offers customizable lighting and the option of black or white heatspreaders attached to some of the faster DDR4 memory we've seen. ...Read more...

Morning's greetings to you, gerbils. We bet you gorged on succulent meats prepared on grills both simple and fancy during Memorial Day. Since you have your bellies full, you're probably sitting at your computers wondering what to take care of next. We have the answer for you: grabbing some hardware deals. We took a good look and came up with the best. ...Read more...

Morning's greetings to you, gerbils. We bet you gorged on succulent meats prepared on grills both simple and fancy during Memorial Day. Since you have your bellies full, you're probably sitting at your computers wondering what to take care of next. We have the answer for you: grabbing some hardware deals. We took a good look and came up with the best. ...Read more...

Way back in February, German site ComputerBase spotted some results in SiSoftware's benchmark database for a Ryzen-based AMD Athlon 200GE. Now, Anandtech notes that the same chip (along with a very similar Ryzen Pro variant) just appeared in both a CPU support list for an Asus motherboard and a Geekbench result page. Those mentions could mean that the first dual-core desktop Ryzen parts are on the way soon.Collating the information, we come up with what appears to be a two-core, four-thread Ryzen APU that includes Vega 3 graphics. The cheapest Ryzen-based chip that AMD currently offers is the Ryzen 3 2200G, priced at an even $100. While the Ryzen 3 2200G is a great value ...Read more...

Most American gerbils are returning to their regularly-scheduled grind this morning after a three-day weekend spent grilling, but over in Taiwan, Gigabyte's web team spent some time crafting a product page for the company's first GeForce GTX 1050 card with 3 GB of memory. This particular card is the first third-party product we've seen materialize since Nvidia's extremely quiet GTX 1050 3 GB launch last week. Gigabyte's new card has base and boost clocks that exceed Nvidia's reference specs for base and boost clocks in gaming and OC mode, though the 7 GT/s memory speed and narrow 96-bit bus stick to the reference plan. ...Read more...

As American gerbils head home for the Memorial Day weekend, many are no doubt preparing to honor our fallen service members. It's also time to engage in the time-honored tradition of grilling up a whole bunch of meat for friends and family. As we all head out to our patios and backyards to fire up the grill, the inevitable question is one of methods.

Setting apart a case in this age of ubiquitous tempered glass and 90° angles is tough. NZXT's Mini-ITX H200i, microATX H400i, and ATX H700i enclosures used clever cable management and an intelligent fan-and-lighting controller to stand out from the pack, but the additional cost and requirements that device carried weren't for everyone. The company is now growing its H-series line by offering the same cases without the controller module for lower prices and without the "i" suffix in the name.

Building a Mini-ITX system is easier than ever thanks to the ever-growing number of options for tiny motherboards, AIO liquid coolers, and compact high-performance graphics cards. French chassis manufacturer Streacom thinks the existing case options for compact custom PC builders are too similar and don't allow users the ability to really build their systems to suit their use cases (ba-doom-ching). The company says its DA2 Mini-ITX enclosure looks classy and offers an otherwise-unavailable level of customization. ...Read more...

People using Intel 600p and Pro 6000p SSDs in their PCs can finally get that update to the latest version of Windows. As you may recall, earlier this month word came out that the brilliantly-titled Windows 10 April 2018 Update was causing machines with those Intel SSDs to have all sorts of problems. Now, Microsoft has the KB4100403 update up that resolves this issue, among several others. ...Read more...

We love to put new hardware through its paces by playing AAA games and other graphically-intense workloads, but lots of systems run for years without ever stressing out their GPU. MSI's Pro 24X all-in-one desktops don't have any discrete graphics options, but they do stuff Kaby Lake-U processors into a svelte package that also includes a 23.8" "IPS-grade" display. ...Read more...

Start saving your work, gerbils—the newest GeForce driver is upon us. Driver version 397.93 is WHQL-certified and ready for State of Decay 2 and The Crew 2's closed beta test. The latest release also adds support for CUDA version 9.2 and fixes a whole bevy of bugs.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600-series SoCs have been common choices for midrange phones from a variety of vendors. Those aging chips are missing some of the features needed for the next wave of reasonably-priced handsets to stay competitive, particularly in the realms of graphics and image processing, so-called "AI" functions, and faster LTE connectivity. Qualcomm says the 10-nm-fabbed Snapdragon 710 delivers on all these fronts and packs a 20% overall performance boost and up to a 40% reduction in power consumption while gaming compared to the 14-nm Snapdragon 660. ...Read more...

When I looked up the last TR BBQ one-month warning, I briefly panicked because it reminded me that I have yet to order this year's Cornhole tournament trophies. Yeah, that sounds about par for the course this time around. I'm not too concerned, though. The TR BBQ is a well-oiled machine, honed over the years to practically run itself. Of course, I do have a to-do list going, and at the very tippy top is a reminder to write what you just read. I feel better already.

Is "scavenger hunt" an oxymoron?

Unless you're just joining us here in the PC hardware fandom, you're likely aware that AMD called its last driver update a "unified" release. That supposedly meant that the Adrenalin Edition Q2 2018 driver would work for Raven Ridge APUs as well as discrete Radeon graphics products. However, that driver only officially supported the desktop Raven Ridge chips. Now, just six days later, we've got the proper unified driver. Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.5.1 boasts support for almost every GCN-based Radeon product ever made.I say "almost" because these drivers don't actually list support for the mobile Raven Ridge APUs (or technicalities like game consoles.) Most likely, that's a matter of AMD passing along the responsibility ...Read more...

Morning, folks. Although I'm a normally a pretend guitarist, I've recently picked up bass guitar thanks to re-joining a band, and my left index finger is crying all the time about its blisters and general state of unhappiness. Who would've thunk that a 1/8" string would be hard on the hands, eh? I can't rest though, and I still need to type. After all, there's PC hardware deals. Today's crop has a lot of storage in it, check it out. ...Read more...

Acer first floated its Predator Helios 300-series gaming laptops around this time last year. At its next@Acer event, the manufacturer revealed that it's making some tweaks to the Helios 300 laptops packing GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1060 graphics. The company is also supplementing its high-end laptop lineup with a harder-hitting Predator Helios 500 with available Intel eighth-generation Core i9 processors and GeForce GTX 1070 graphics.

Back when we first heard about G-Sync HDR, there were two monitors on the docket: Acer's Predator X27 and Asus' ROG Swift PG27UQ. The ROG Swift series is renowned for producing some of the very best gaming monitors to date, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ is the G-Sync HDR monitor that a lot of folks are waiting on. ...Read more...

When you hear "Acer" in the context of monitors, you may be forgiven for having flashbacks of that amazing (and amazingly expensive) Predator X27 that just went up for pre-order. The company also makes a lot of displays for mere mortals, though. At its next@Acer event today, Acer announced two new lines of monitors aimed at gamers: the Nitro VG0 and RG0 series. Every display in both series uses an IPS LCD panel and supports FreeSync.

We've already covered Acer's Predator and Orion desktops revealed at the next@Acer event in New York, but the company also had a bevy of portables on display. Windows users looking for a combination of performance, light weight, and style probably want to focus on the metal-shelled Swift 3 and Swift 5 laptops. Those who prefer Google's Chrome OS get to choose from 13" and 15" Chromebook clamshell laptops or the gymnast-hinged Chromebook Spin convertibles.

It's been a little over a year since AMD began fleshing out its Ryzen CPU lineup. System builders now have a full range of competitive AMD chips to choose from, whether they need APUs with integrated graphics, eight-core mainstream chips, or 16-core high-end monsters. We imagine Intel's Coffee Lake and Skylake-X CPUs have motivated more than a few builders to put together new systems of their own, as well.Whatever your CPU maker of choice may be, we want to get an idea of just how the battle lines are ...Read more...

Acer's just wrapped up its 2018 next@Acer event right now, and you know what that means: there's a whole pile of new products to talk about. Let's start off with the most powerful hardware and take a look at the company's new gaming desktops: the Predator Orion 3000 and Orion 5000 towers, plus the Nitro 50 small-form-factor machine. ...Read more...

Believe it or not, a lot of people are playing a lot of games on Intel graphics adapters. Fortunately for those folks, Intel produces regular driver updates, just like its competitors. The latest driver is version number 24.20.100.6094 (a big naming change from previous versions that employed an xx.yy format) and comes with support for the latest crop of titles.

High-end Android phones tend to be set apart by fairly minor details. They usually get the same Qualcomm SoCs, similar amounts of memory and storage, and screens roughly the same size. HTC is hoping that the interface tweaks it baked into its latest U12+ flagship will help the handset stand out in a crowded market. The manufacturer designed the phone with pressure-sensitive buttons on the side instead of regular clickers. The U12+'s second biggest departure from the rest of the high-end phone crowd is the addition of a second camera on the front of the handset. ...Read more...

Hawking a computer hardware product that doesn't have RGB LEDs on it is a hard sell in today's market, it seems. At least, that appears to be why despite having a whole range of completely competent coolers on offer, Cooler Master has gone and created the MasterAir MA410M. This cooler uses four copper heatpipes and a pair of MF120R fans to cool most Intel and AMD CPUs from the last ten years or so. ...Read more...

We wrote about Huawei's MateBook X Pro when the company unveiled the machine at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona back in March. The nearly bezel-less notebook has been shipping to customers in Europe for a few weeks at prices starting at €1499 ($1537 without VAT). After some speculation about whether the machine would make it stateside at all, the laptop is now available at US retailers at lower-than-expected prices. ...Read more...

My youngest just turned one. We don't need any more "musical instruments" in our house.

Hullo, gerbils! We're fairly certain you've already noticed that we've officially entered the pre-Computex lull. Big product announcements probably won't appear over the next couple weeks as PR departments hoard their precious info for the early-June blast. In the meantime, we're fine with grabbing deals on gear that might get superseded in two weeks' time. Take a look at what we've come up with. ...Read more...

Razer's latest Blade laptop packs considerable gaming grunt into a svelte chassis, but sometimes gamers are willing to temporarily trade away an ultrabook's mobility in exchange for more pixel-pushing power. The Core X is the company's third take on the external graphics enclosure concept, and it promises additional refinement to the concept while dropping the required cash outlay. ...Read more...

Everybody wants their devices to get smaller. There's a problem when you apply that paradigm to laptops, though: the screen size. Any serious work that requires a laptop also requires a reasonably-sized screen. Even still, there's quite a bit of space to save on most laptops. Razer demonstrates that with the latest version of its Blade laptop, which it claims is the world's smallest 15.6" gaming machine. ...Read more...

NZXT has built up a distinctive product range that encompasses cases, CPU and graphics-card coolers, and even motherboards, all with a unified and distinctive design language. Today, the company is making the fruits of its design chops attainable for more builders with its H500 and and H500i cases. ...Read more...

Intel and Micron jointly announced today that they've begun production and shipments of what they claim is the first quad-level-cell (QLC) NAND flash memory in the industry. With a 64-layer 3D structure, the chips achieve one terabit (125 gigabytes) of density per die. If that's not enough bits for you, the companies also claim that their third-generation 96-layer 3D NAND is in the works to allow for even higher density per die.Most 3D NAND these days uses triple-level-cell (TLC) NAND and 3D fabrication techniques, so the storage of four bits of information per cell represents a substantial increase in per-cell capacity. ...Read more...

Twitter user momomo_us spotted an unnamed Intel CPU packing eight cores and 16 threads that popped up in SiSoft's Official Ranker database over the weekend. The processor in question appears to be the rumored eight-core desktop Coffee Lake chip we've written about several times. Let's take a closer look. ...Read more...

Silverstone just released a new model in its Nightjar family of passively-cooled power supplies. Like its brethren in the series, the Nightjar NJ450 is fully modular and bears an 80 Plus Platinum certification. There are no gimmicks here; this unit isn't "partially passive" or anything of the sort. The NJ450 doesn't have a fan, and the external casing is a series of ribbed plates that serve as heatsinks. ...Read more...

Amazon's Alexa already dominates the smart speaker market when it comes to install base, but the retailer-slash-cloud-giant isn't stopping there. Acer announced its intent to bring the voice assistant to its PCs and peripherals at CES in January, and that the capability is coming first to the company's Spin 3 and Spin 5 laptops through a software update. Acer's didn't spell out what specific models could add Alexa through software, but it did say the upcoming refresh of its Nitro 5 Spin gaming laptop would be the first notebook to come with Amazon's voice assistant factory-installed.The company's announcement says certain product lines already in customer hands could expect software to unlock dormant Alexa abilities. The PC maker says eligible machines will get updated software through its Acer Care Center utility. Some Spin 5 models will get the new software ...Read more...