Techreport

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...

Nokia launched its X6 midrange Android handset in China earlier this week. The phone is the company's first with a notched screen and razor-thin bezels, a look that's come to characterize new handsets in 2018. The manufacturer's chief product officer posted a Twitter poll asking prospective buyers if the the X6 should be offered in other markets. The response was resoundingly receptive to the idea—92% of respondents answered in the affirmative.

Nokia launched its X6 midrange Android handset in China earlier this week. The phone is the company's first with a notched screen and razor-thin bezels, a look that's come to characterize new handsets in 2018. The manufacturer's chief product officer posted a Twitter poll asking prospective buyers if the the X6 should be offered in other markets. The response was resoundingly receptive to the idea—92% of respondents answered in the affirmative.

Over on GeForce.com, TR tipster SH SOTN spotted a new listing on the GeForce GTX 1050 page. The green giant has silently added a 3 GB version of the GeForce GTX 1050 to its lineup. Despite lacking the "Ti" branding, this card has the same number of shader cores as the 1050 Ti. It also runs at a higher clock rate than the Ti version. However, its memory interface is narrower than even the 2GB card's, at just 96 bits wide. ...Read more...

All hands on deck, prospective gerbils! Some of you may have joined in on the fun of virtual PC building with the aptly-named PC Building Simulator. Although the game includes wares from many a company, one of the oldest PC case manufacturers has been notably amiss from the game. Good news, everyone: you now have Antec cases to virtually build with. ...Read more...

AMD's Raven Ridge Ryzen APUs offer a level of combined CPU and graphics performance that we haven't seen from any other manufacturer, but as with all computer technology, the engineering is only partially done when the hardware is finalized. AMD's driver team has been hard at work improving the software that makes the Vega graphics in the Ryzen APUs tick, and the latest result is Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition Q2 2018. Intriguingly, James Prior from AMD tweeted that these drivers offer unified support for both Ryzen APUs and Radeon graphics cards, but the release notes only mention support for the desktop-bound Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G chips. The driver does not support the similarly-named Ryzen mobile APUs. ...Read more...

Lian Li isn't the first PC parts maker that comes to mind when the topic of RGB LED illumination comes up, but several of the company's latest cases are factory-equipped with color-changing diodes. The aluminum-championing outfit is following up cases like the Alpha 550 with the Bora Lite 120 RGB fans. Longtime followers of the brand shouldn't be terribly surprised to learn that the Bora Lite fans have CNC-machined aluminum frames lit up by the photons emitted from 12 color-changing diodes integrated into the center hub. ...Read more...

Remember that Acer Predator X27 monitor that PC World's executive editor was salivating over just a bit ago? Well, it's available for pre-order at Newegg. Yes, folks, the first G-Sync HDR display is finally up for sale. It's cheaper than we expected, too. Newegg says it'll dole out the displays on June 1 for the low, low price of just $2000. ...Read more...

You might think that video gaming would be one of the hobbies most suited for those with physical disabilities. Unfortunately, that's not really the case. Operating a modern game controller requires a degree of manual dexterity that ranges between "high" and "ludicrous." For those with limited ability to manipulate the densely-packed bits and bobs on a game controller, Microsoft is stepping forward with a solution: the highly-configurable and expandable Xbox Adaptive Controller. ...Read more...

Troubled Japanese firm Toshiba Corporation has gotten the final stamp of governmental approval it needed to sell off its memory chip business, known as Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC). In a statement released today, Toshiba says the final sale of all TMC shares to K. K. Pangea will happen on June 1. The sale price comes out to ¥2 trillion, or around $18 billion.If (like I was) you're wondering who K. K. Pangea is, you can more or less think of it as "that company that bought TMC." K. K. Pangea was specifically formed to be the front-end of ...Read more...

American buyers looking for a high-end phone have an excellent chance of ending up with a SoC from one of two families: an Apple A-series chip in one of the various iPhone models, or a chip from Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800-series portfolio used by almost all Android vendors. Huawei uses its in-house HiSilicon Kirin 970 in a couple of handsets, but those are a drop in the bucket compared to the flagship market taken as a whole.Phone vendors might soon be getting an additional high-end SoC option from Samsung, as the Korean silicon manufacturer is reportedly expanding third-party sales of its Exynos chips ...Read more...

When us PC lovers are building a new rig, we make a lot of decisions. We have to balance a tight budget, find the best possible components, and achieve a perfect aesthetic. For those running liquid-cooled rigs, EK is hoping to make that last bit possible without having to compromise on cooling performance. The company's new EK-Vardar EVO 120ER RGB LED fans aim to improve on the look of EK's well-known and well-loved spinners. ...Read more...

Fact: Packs of rats are cuter than pack rats.

If I hear the phrase "new Samsung monitor," I immediately imagine something with a curved ultra-wide panel. The monitor masters over at TFT Central seem to figure that's a good generalization of future gaming displays from the Korean super-manufacturer. The outlet reports that Samsung is doubling down on ultra-wide panels and its own quantum-dot special sauce for increased color space coverage, higher resolutions, and boosted refresh rates for gaming-focused monitors.

Hello there, gerbils. In case you missed it, our overlord Jeff Kampman has written up an interesting article about casual overclocking in the modern age. If you haven't checked it out yet, go read it and opine in the comments section. Meanwhile, check out today's selection of deals. ...Read more...

Hello there, gerbils. In case you missed it, our overlord Jeff Kampman has written up an interesting article about casual overclocking in the modern age. If you haven't checked it out yet, go read it and opine in the comments section. Meanwhile, check out today's selection of deals. ...Read more...

I live in an environment so noisy that it's certainly a significant contributor to my long-term hearing loss. Some of you surely select machines based on how quiet they run, though. It's hard to get a lot quieter than completely silent, as is the case with passively-cooled PCs like Zotac's Zbox C series. The latest model in the line-up is the Zbox CI329 nano powered by a quad-core Gemini Lake CPU. ...Read more...

Intel announced that its first Xeon Scalable processor with an integrated FPGA is being made available to select customers. The Xeon Scalable 6138P includes an Arria 10 GX 1150 FPGA on package that's connected to the CPU die using Intel's Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI). According to Intel, UPI offers these chips coherent and direct access to data in the processor or FPGA caches and in main memory without the overhead of direct memory access or data replication.Intel、Arria 10 FPGAを統合した「Xeon Gold 6138P」 https://t.co/mu719pPP6k ...Read more...

Intel announced that its first Xeon Scalable processor with an integrated FPGA is being made available to select customers. The Xeon Scalable 6138P includes an Arria 10 GX 1150 FPGA on package that's connected to the CPU die using Intel's Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI). According to Intel, UPI offers these chips coherent and direct access to data in the processor or FPGA caches and in main memory without the overhead of direct memory access or data replication.Intel、Arria 10 FPGAを統合した「Xeon Gold 6138P」 https://t.co/mu719pPP6k ...Read more...

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is planning to release some low-cost Surface tablets later this year. The news agency remarks that Microsoft is hunting for a piece of Apple's iPad pie, and says that the Windows maker intends to do so with a new Intel-powered Surface tablet with a 10" screen. The purported device will run Windows, but the real news here is the expected price: around $400.Bloomberg specifically says the upcoming devices will run Windows 10 Pro, and that they'll be available with 64 GB or 128 GB of storage. The new tablets will also supposedly be the first Surface devices to sport USB Type-C ...Read more...

Hot on the heels of Huawei's Honor 10 announcement comes fellow smartphone "disruptor" OnePlus with its latest handset. The OnePlus 6 is based around Qualcomm's popular Snapdragon 845 SoC and follows other recent smartphones into the land of tiny bezels, a notch on the front for the camera and speaker, a glass back, and a dual-rear-camera setup. ...Read more...

Huawei showed off its Honor 10 in London yesterday, and the Honor sub-brand's new flagship is all-in on 2018's high-end smartphone trends. The 5.84" IPS LCD display is pushed out to the edges of the chassis, the speaker and user-facing camera are housed in a notch, and the manufacturer is making brave claims about the improvements that a pair of cameras and a "neural processing unit" baked into the SoC can make to users' pictures. Users brave enough to go without a case will stand out in a crowd thanks to the Honor 10's glass back and available color-shifting "Phantom Blue" finish. ...Read more...

Controllers for PC games are a fairly standardized deal at this point. Any active gamer surely has a keyboard and mouse, and many have a controller from Microsoft's last couple generations of Xbox kicking around. These uniform control schemes are something VR developers can't take for granted given the way the field has changed over the last few years. VR kits from multiple vendors come with unique controllers, and next-gen prototypes are being shown all the time.Valve says its SteamVR Input beta can help developers make their software work better with multiple controllers and could even make titles work with yet-unknown control methods in the future. The ...Read more...

The classic whiteboard is a ubiquitous fixture of conference and boardrooms in modern offices. It's been around a while, though—long enough that it seems like it's about time for a change. Microsoft enjoyed some success in entering the "digital whiteboard" space once with the Surface Hub, but the hardware's high price and limited availability kept it from enjoying widespread success outside of high-end boardrooms. Now the company is improving the formula with the smaller, sleeker Surface Hub 2. ...Read more...

Update 5/16/2018 5:55 PM: Intel has confirmed that the Core i3-8121U supports AVX-512 instructions and has added that information to the ARK database. Our original story continues below.When Intel's Cannon Lake Core i3-8121U appeared in the company's ARK database yesterday , the chip's entry didn't suggest any support for AVX-512 instructions—an expected feature of the next-generation microarchitecture. That entry may be incomplete, however. ...Read more...

When Intel's Cannon Lake Core i3-8121U appeared in the company's ARK database yesterday, the chip's entry didn't suggest any support for AVX-512 instructions—an expected feature of the next-generation microarchitecture. That entry may be incomplete, however. CPU detective InstLatX64 has obtained a CPUID dump for the chip from a Lenovo Ideapad 330-15ICN with the i3-8121U inside, and the chip does appear to offer AVX-512 support.DualCore #Intel Core i3-8121U ( #CannonLake -U) 60663 CPUID dump added w/ #AVX512 (F,CD,BW,DQ,VL,IFMA,VBMI), SHA, UMIP, PKU, w/o SGX, TSX, CLWB @pshufb ...Read more...

Hi there, gerbils! Folks, this is an insane day. We're not entirely sure of what's happened recently, but we've seen a sharp drop in SSD prices. Multiple drives have had their price stickers mercilessly slashed, and PC builders and upgraders everywhere can reap the benefits. Let's get this going. ...Read more...

Yeah, yeah, I know this pun is bad even for my standards.

After months of rumors and speculation, Intel has quietly acknowledged the existence of the first shipping Cannon Lake processor: the Core i3-8121U. The company made a public entry in its ARK database for the chip today that perhaps raises more questions than it answers.The ARK entry confirms that the i3-8121U is a two-core, four-thread chip with a 2.2-GHz base clock and a 3.2-GHz Turbo Boost peak. The appearance of Turbo Boost makes this one of a handful of Core i3 chips currently available with that capability. The ...Read more...

In the world of PCs, "gaming" tends to means "high performance", and that usually means higher power consumption. Poor battery life is just one reason why hardcore gamers tend to avoid wireless mice. Logitech thinks that those folks should give cord-cutting another chance, though. The company debuted its Hero high-efficiency and low-latency wireless mouse sensor last year with the G603 Lightspeed. Now, the G305 Lightspeed combines that same sensor with the classic shape of the G Pro, all at a lower price than the G603. ...Read more...

HP just yesterday announced a top-to-bottom refresh of its Envy and Elite series premium machines, including laptops, desktops, and AIO machines. We'll be looking at some of the Envy hardware later today, but for now let's take a peek at the new EliteBooks. The EliteBook 1050 G1, EliteBook x360 1030 G3, and Elite x2 1013 G3 are all-new premium portable PCs packing Intel's latest processors into sleek silver chassis. ...Read more...

Once upon a time, buyers could count on a display far outlasting the usefulness of a PC purchased at the same time. However, the era of 50% year-over-year processor performance bumps appear to be long over, so all-in-one desktops make good sense for a large set of buyers. After all, Apple and Microsoft's only serious entries in the desktop computer market are AIOs (the nearly four-year-old Mac Mini doesn't count, sorry). HP is spiffing up two of its AIO PC families with Intel's eighth-generation Core processors: the EliteOne 1000 G2 for businesses, and the refreshed Envy 27 and Envy 34 for home users.

Intel's Coffee Lake six-core mobile CPUs deliver a lot of performance in power envelopes up to 45 W. Most manufacturers go one step further and combine that power efficiency with fairly hefty cooling solutions and chassis. Asus says the three heat pipes and pair of fans in its ZenBook Pro 15 notebook allow the laptop to flex its available six-core muscles at speeds up to 4.5 GHz in an aluminum unibody chassis that's less than 0.75" (1.9 cm) thick. ...Read more...

G'day, gerbils. I won't delay you much today with an arguably-amusing intro detailing whatever's going on at the TR labs or my own abode at this very moment. This post will be quick and to the point: you can get an AMD Ryzen 7 1700 for $192.09, down to the last cent, at Rakuten. You'll need to apply the code SAVE15 at the second step of checkout. ...Read more...

Intel's struggles getting its 10-nm fabrication technology up and running have been well documented. The blue silicon juggernaut's CEO admitted in a recent conference call that chips built on the new node wouldn't ship in volume until sometime in 2019. In light of this information, we were somewhat surprised to learn about the appearance of a Lenovo IdeaPad 330 sporting what appears to be a Cannon Lake CPU in Chinese e-tailer JD's product catalog. The machine in question has a Core i3-8121U processor and a ¥3299 price tag (about $450), suggesting that Intel is able to make low-end chips on its 10-nm node.

Have you ever heard of a little monitor manufacturer called Wasabi Mango, gerbils? Even if you haven't, the Korean brand isn't a complete unknown—it's been selling monitors worldwide on Amazon, eBay, and Newegg for a few years now. Wasabi Mango has managed to effect a major coup on its much larger competitors by releasing what appears to be the world's first commercially-available monitor that can accept and display a 3840x2160 video stream refreshing at 120 Hz. The display is simply named the UHD430. ...Read more...

Intel made the details of the long-rumored Z390 chipset official yesterday when it posted a product brief for the platform controller hub on its website. Going by that document, Z390 motherboards will be the first overclocking-friendly models built with the same chipset silicon that underpins today's H370, B360, and H310 boards. That means whenever Z390 boards arrive, they'll support Intel's Integrated Connectivity, or CNVi, wireless modules and native USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports from the chipset alongside eighth-generation Core CPUs. In short, Z390 relieves the odd-man-out Kaby Lake PCH of its duties for Intel's eighth-generation platforms.

Some SSD vendors are quick (ba-doom-ching) to point out the speed of their latest and greatest offerings, but Gigabyte is giving reliability top billing with its new UD Pro SATA drives. Right now, the company is offering the drives in 256 GB and 512 GB capacities in the familiar 2.5" form factor. The manufacturer says the drives use Toshiba BiCS3 3D TLC NAND flash chips. Gigabyte hinted at wilder upcoming hardware in the series, too. ...Read more...

When VESA announced its three-tiered DisplayHDR monitor certification program, the group promised it'd have a software utility for end users to check their displays' compliance with the standard by the end of Q2 2018. The outfit has delivered on that promise with this week's release of the DisplayHDR Test application for Windows 10. VESA's announcement says the tool works with "off the shelf calibration colorimeters," but consumers will have to wait for the next update to get a list of colorimeters that meet the group's requirements for accuracy and tolerance. ...Read more...

There's a sizable contingent of buyers (particularly in business environments) that favor Intel hardware. Indeed, people have frequently swapped Intel into IBM's place in the old adage "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Modern hardware and software is so complex that issues can crop up almost anywhere, though. Case in point: machines equipped with Intel's 600p and Pro 6000p SSDs are not able to upgrade to the Windows 10 April 2018 update due to a known compatibility issue.Microsoft doesn't explain exactly what the problem is, but it manifests as an inability to boot into Windows. Some systems will reportedly boot into their UEFI setup as if there is no bootable device, while others will crash and restart repeatedly. When the company initially announced ...Read more...

Mini-ITX systems are a great way for system builders to stuff standard desktop (and sometimes mobile) parts into small spaces, but some folks are willing to make further sacrifices in the name of reducing physical volume. Asus' Prime H310T motherboard is squarely aimed at space-saving builds and OEMs looking to assemble all-in-one desktop systems with its Thin Mini-ITX form factor and its specific combination of features. ...Read more...

The Taiwan-style case aesthetic of late seems to be defined by simple and functional enclosures embellished with highly-visible accents and built-in lighting. Enermax's Saberay may be the best exemplar of the form that we've seen in 2018. The Saberay is a full-tower ATX case with two RGB LED-lit stripes running the full length of its front and top. It also has three RGB LED fans pre-installed shining through the acrylic front panel, and a large glass window on the side to show off your build. ...Read more...

So, how much money is Nvidia making? A whole lot of it, apparently. The company already saw a record fiscal Q4 2018, and now it's published numbers for its fiscal Q1 2019. If you haven't guessed it by now, Nvidia saw record revenue of $3.21 billion, a whopping 66% rise from a year ago. The company pulled in $1.3 billion in operating profit, a 134% jump since a year past. Gross margins increased further to 64.5%—an increase of a 2.6 percentage points on the year. The company attributes that margin growth to "higher value platforms in the GPU segment," which we take to mean sales of high-margin, high-end graphics cards.The largest piece of the revenue pie is by far the GPU segment, to the tune of $2.77 billion—a 77% increase year-on-year. Most of that cash was made by the gaming sub-subsegment, ...Read more...

I almost shared a picture of my cubicle, but your eyes aren't ready.