Techreport

Greetings, gerbils and gerbilettes. I'm not going to write up a pretty intro today, because Amazon's running a hot sale on PC components with fancy gear and a Kardashian-buttload of discounts. Grab your shovels and pickaxes, we'll dig right in. ...Read more...

Intel's mainstream desktop chipset for the overclocking crowd hasn't changed much in the two generations since Z170 entered the market alongside the company's Skylake chips in mid-2015. The big addition with Z270 was support for the manufacturer's Optane cache modules, and Z370 didn't seem to be much different aside from some changes regarding power delivery for the accompanying six-core Coffee Lake processors. The release notes for the latest version of Intel's Rapid Storage Technology drivers hint at Z390 and X399, two future chipsets that could potentially offer new features.

Shout out to my boy Andy who wants to liquid-cool everything in his system. Adata's got just the RAM for him: the XPG Spectrix D80 series. These memory modules have RGB LED lighting, but that's not the most unusual thing about them. As you could guess, they use a form of liquid cooling. The Spectrix D80 appears to be the shipping version of the company's "Jellyfish" project shown at CES 2018. ...Read more...

The best way to get microcode updates for security flaws like Spectre is a firmware patch from a motherboard or system maker. Some manufacturers are laggging behind others when it comes to these kinds of patches, though. Microsoft has done its part in rolling out updated microcode to Windows users at the OS level, which is the next-best way to mitigate these types of problems. The software giant just released KB4091666 for Windows 10, an update that contains Intel-supplied microcode fixes for various Haswell, Broadwell, and Skylake CPUs. The patch is said to patch up Spectre Variant 2 ("Branch target injection") on affected systems.Major hardware vendors have released firmware patches for many or most Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake motherboards and systems. Coverage of Skylake systems appears to have generally been good, but updates for ...Read more...

In the wake of a solid second-generation Ryzen CPU launch, AMD reported its first-quarter 2018 financial results this afternoon. The company announced revenue of $1.65 billion, up 40% year-on-year, and operating income of $120 million, up a whopping 990% from $11 million a year ago. To wrap up a fine quarter, the company reported net income of $81 million, reversing a course charted by a $33 million net loss a year ago. The company earned eight cents per share, up from a four-cent-per-share loss a year ago. Gross margin was 36%, up four percentage points.Source: ...Read more...

The degree and duration of the recent graphics card price hikes has some folks in a frenzy. This writer has even heard others in his profession mutter doubts about the future of PC gaming as a result. Just as all hope seems to drain away, AMD and MSI swoop in with a deal for desperate gamers in dire straits: the AMD Combat Crate. You can pick up a Ryzen 5 1600 CPU, an MSI B350 Tomahawk motherboard, and an MSI Armor Radeon RX 580 8G OC graphics card for just $549, or about $75 off the total price for the individual components. ...Read more...

We wrote yesterday about Dell Precision notebooks in regular and 2-in-1 flavors, plus a host of new models in the company's 25th-anniversary Optiplex desktop lineup. Those articles still don't cover all of the Texas-based PC maker's business-focused machines for end users, though. Dell has also updated its Latitude 5000 line with a pair of new versions built around Intel's eighth-generation H-series vPro mobile processors. Buyers can pick out Latitude 5491 and Latitude 5591 notebooks in many configurations, with or without Nvidia GeForce MX 130 graphics and Thunderbolt 3 ports.

When I was a kid, I used to agitate my older brother by playing with his Battletech miniatures. Some thirty years later, I'm here looking forward to playing a new Battletech game. GeForce gamers keen to mount their 'mech and take to the battlefields of the Succession Wars should stop off at Nvidia's site to grab the latest graphics driver, version 397.31. It's Game Ready for Battletech as well as 11 bit studios' Frostpunk. ...Read more...

Between elevated prices for graphics cards, the high cost of system memory, and the expense of a headset, getting all the parts together for a PC-based VR system is an expensive proposition. Jumping to the high end of the market with HTC's recently-released Vive Pro higher-resolution head-mounted display is pricier still. To date, the company has posititioned the Vive Pro as an upgrade for owners of the original Vive HMD. Yesterday's announcement of the Vive Pro Virtual Reality System business kits changes that policy somewhat. ...Read more...

We wrote earlier today about Dell's Precision 5530 2-in-1 portable with Intel Kaby Lake-G processors. As impressive as that machine's specs are, the Intel-AMD unified processor package isn't the right tool for every job. Dell has updated other members of its Precision mobile workstation lineup, coupling the capabilities of the newest eighth-generation Intel Core mobile CPUs with optional discrete professional GPUs and some of the fastest memory we've seen factory-fitted to a laptop from a major vendor.

That's no stock photo, those were my breakfast. Mmm...

Howdy, folks. We've just reviewed the Samsung 970 EVO solid-state drive and found it worthy of a TR Recommended award. SSD prices are slowly-but-steadily coming down, and graphics cards' stickers are also descending from the stratosphere. Add to that the recent release of AMD's second-generation Ryzen desktop processors, and we figure it's safe to say that we're finally exiting the PC-building doldrums. We've hunted high and low for the best hardware deals for that endeavor. Here they are. ...Read more...

Dell's been selling business-oriented desktops under the OptiPlex name for 25 years. To celebrate, the company is replacing the entire line with new offerings. The refreshed gear includes four new all-in-one machines alongside a whole fleet of mini-tower, SFF, and micro-desktops. There's also a new OptiPlex XE3 ruggedized desktop. There's a lot of ground to cover, but let's take a quick peek at the new OptiPlex lineup. ...Read more...

Intel and AMD's combined work on the Kaby Lake-G hybrid CPU-GPU package is impressive. The combination already demonstrated considerable gaming capability in Intel's Hades Canyon NUC ultra-small gaming PC and promises to deliver similar performance in upcoming laptops. Dell's promoting its upcoming lineup of Precision 5530 2-in-1 mobile workstations, and buried in the press materials is a little nugget suggesting professional aspirations for those chips' integrated Vega graphics. ...Read more...

Along with the 970 EVO drives we reviewed this morning, Samsung is updating its professional-grade NVMe gumsticks. The new 970 Pro series of SSDs offers Samsung's latest 64-layer V-NAND in an MLC configuration for an extra dose of performance potential and endurance. That flash memory takes orders from the higher-clocked and nickel-capped Phoenix controller that we got to examine in depth on the 970 EVO 1 TB.Samsung claims sequential read performance of up to 3500 MB/s and sequential write performance of up to 2700 MB/s from the 970 Pro. For comparison, the drive's claimed sequential read performance is the same as that of the 970 EVO, while its ...Read more...

Wait, there's really just two months to go before the TR BBQ XV? Man, I need to get my act together! Whose crazy idea was it to have the event so early in the summer?Time really does fly when you're having fun, and the Westrate household has been positively chock-full of "fun" since the beginning of the year. I suppose that's only natural when 12 people are living under one roof, but that's ...Read more...

A 43" display stretches the definition of "computer monitor" a bit, but gamers and media consumers can certainly make a case for such a sizable screen. That's especially true if the monitor uses a 3840x2160 MVA panel with a typical contrast ratio of 4000:1 and a maximum brightness of 1000 cd/m², like Philips' upcoming Momentum 43 display, model number 436M6VBPAB (PDF). ...Read more...

PC builders can be picky people. Some folks need matching RGB LEDs, while others need every part in their machine to be from the same brand. If you're part of the latter group, never fear—MSI is now offering computer cases. The MAG Pylon RGB and MAG Bunker cases look pretty familiar at a glance, but let's check them out in detail.

Intel seems to be bullish about its NUCs. We've recently taken a good look at Intel's Hades Canyon gaming NUC, and now website WinFuture.de got a hold of pictures and specs of what appears to be a prototype "Crimson Canyon" NUC (model name NUC8I3CYSM2) packing an as-yet-unlisted Intel Core i3-8121U CPU. That chip is rumored to be a 10-nm unit based on the company's upcoming Cannon Lake architecture. Perhaps more surprisingly, though, that NUC apparently carries an as-yet-unannounced Radeon 550 graphics chip onboard.

AMD's Ryzen 2000-series CPUs with Vega graphics (popularly known as Ryzen APUs) offer both solid CPU performance and respectable GPU performance. It's hard to passively cool a 65-W chip in a small space, though. Builders who are extremely sensitive to fan noise should probably opt instead for one of the chips AMD just announced: the Ryzen 3 2200GE and Ryzen 5 2400GE, both spec'd with 35 W TDPs.The table above compares the chips to their 65-W brothers, and the step down from 65 W to 35 W doesn't impact their clock rates as much as you might expect. In particular, the graphics clock rates ...Read more...

It's Friday, gerbils, and some of you probably have plans this weekend. Others might be looking for something to do, so why not play Satellite Reign? "But Zak," you cry, "I don't want to pay $30 for a game I've never heard of." Well you're in luck, because if you get it today, it's free at the Humble Store.

Copper is an excellent material for heatsinks, but its high cost when compared to aluminum means it's sparingly used in heatsinks and other cooling components. Cryorig's C7 Cu CPU cooler capitalizes on the material's higher thermal conductivity to deliver high cooling performance in compact spaces where tower coolers might otherwise not be feasible. The company says the exclusive use of copper in the C7 Cu provides 15% better thermal performance compared to its own standard copper-and-aluminum C7 model. ...Read more...

Building a basic computer these days is as easy as it's ever been. Building a custom-cooled high-end gaming system is a bigger challenge than many folks want to tackle, and EK Water Blocks has stepped up with new options for buyers that want the bragging rights of an open-loop-cooled rig without the headaches and potential leaks of gathering parts and putting everything together. The company's new Fluid Gaming line of pre-assembled gaming PCs combines quality hardware from well-known manufacturers with the company's expertise in cooling system design and assembly. ...Read more...

Dragging windows around or even simply moving the mouse pointer feels smoother and clearer on a high-refresh display. However, refresh rate is only one piece of the puzzle. USB polling rates aren't matched up to screen refreshes, so a mouse with a high rate is important to get the most out of your fast monitor. All reputable gaming mice support a 1-KHz polling rate, but Thermaltake's Iris Optical mouse is only the second rodent we've ever seen that breaks that barrier to offer a 2-KHz polling rate. ...Read more...

The last time we wrote about Acer's Predator Orion 9000 gaming desktop line was when the company showed off prototype units in Berlin all the way back in August of last year. Back then, Acer said the Orion 9000s could be fitted with 18-core Intel Core i9 Extreme CPUs and quad-Crossfire Vega setups. In the intervening eight months, though, AMD's Radeon RX Vega cards haven't gotten any easier to find. The company adjusted its plans for the Orion 9000. Two of three now-shipping configurations sport eighth-generation Core i7 processors, and all models come with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards. ...Read more...

Champion overclocker der8auer has done it again. This time around, he's been using and abusing one of AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X CPUs, and his efforts have yielded him what is currently the highest-recorded clock speed on a Ryzen CPU yet: a whole 6 GHz. As you no doubt expect, that number was achieved using liquid nitrogen as the cooling medium and a scorching CPU core voltage of 1.85 V....Read more...

Flagship Android phones might get all the press these days, but not everyone has $800-and-more burning a hole in their pocket. That fact didn't escape the notice of Lenovo-subsidiary Motorola, who's chasing the lower-midrange and low-end markets with its Moto G and Moto E handsets. The company today took the wraps off of four new phones, the Moto G6, Moto G6 Play, Moto E5 Plus, and Moto E5 Play.

Tuesday was epic. Hanging out seems pretty lame. Sorry, I'll stop now.

Hello, gerbils! Jeff's been hard at work on the review of AMD's latest Ryzen 2000-series processsors. It's safe to say that the company delivered and that we'll see quite a few of those CPUs in our future recommendations. However, deals can't stop just because some CPUs came out. Check out what we have for you today. ...Read more...

AMD's second-generation Ryzen processors weren't the only thing we got to see at a press event in New York recently. The company had a PowerColor take on its elusive Vega Nano graphics card to tease, as well, and I snapped a couple pics. Enjoy: ...Read more...

As Jeff remarked in his review, second-generation Ryzen parts more readily support speedy memory than their predecessors. That's a good thing, because system performance with AMD's CPUs benefits from higher memory speeds. If you're building a rig with a Ryzen 2000-series chip, G.Skill is armed and ready to supply you with sticks of extra-fast Sniper X and Trident Z RGB RAM built specifically for AMD's new chips. ...Read more...

As nice as it might be for AMD to have countless enthusiasts building custom PCs among its customer base, having major laptop makers like Dell, HP, and Lenovo on board means a lot to the all-important bottom line. We've already seen portables from the two largest American PC makers built around AMD's Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 7 2700U APUs, and now Lenovo has added product pages detailing its newest 14" ThinkPad E485 14" and 15.6" ThinkPad E585 notebooks. The manufacturer's offerings are the first we can recall with the red silicon vendor's Ryzen 3 2200U chip on the option sheet.

It wasn't all that long ago that hard drives still beat SSDs for physical density. That's not the case anymore (as proven by these bad boys), but they're still miles ahead for price-per-gigabyte. Not every workload needs the performance of solid-state storage, either. Datacenters looking to pick up a few petabytes of storage could buy a few less drives now that WD has announced the Ultrastar DC HC530 in 14 TB capacity. ...Read more...

When it rains, it pours. Today, the drops from the sky take the form of new displays conforming to AMD's FreeSync 2 adaptive-refresh-rate specifications. We reported earlier on BenQ's EX3203R, and now AOC joins the party with its AG322QC4. The 31.5" diagonal size of the panel is about the only thing one can intuit from that alphanumeric-grab-bag product number, so let's explore the not-as-obvious details on the latest entry to VESA's list of DisplayHDR-conforming monitors. ...Read more...

Listen up, gerbils. If you've been clamoring for a new build but you're disgusted at marked-up graphics card prices, scrabble on over to Nvidia's GeForce Store and get to ordering. GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070, and GTX 1080 Founders Edition cards are in stock right now, and they're selling for MSRP. ...Read more...

Listen up, gerbils. If you've been clamoring for a new build but you're disgusted at marked-up graphics card prices, scrabble on over to Nvidia's GeForce Store and get to ordering. GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070, and GTX 1080 Founders Edition cards are in stock right now, and they're selling for MSRP amounts. ...Read more...

When it comes to desktop computers, most gerbils have a strong preference for rolling their own from components rather than buying something off the shelf or from a mail-order outfit. In recent months, though, shortages of certain parts have made pre-assembled systems more attractive than usual. The dragon riders over at MSI have updated the Aegis 3, Aegis Ti3, Infinite A, Trident 3, Trident 3 Arctic, and Nightblade MI3 gaming desktops with Intel's eighth-generation Core processors. The company didn't mention any chip models by name, but we'd expect to see Core i5-8400 and Core i7-8700 chips in all of them except the flagship Aegis Ti3, where we predict the overclockable Core i7-8700K will make an appearance.

The product page for BenQ's latest gaming display just showed up on its global site. The new EX3203R appears to be an update of the older EX3200R, but don't let that dim your interest. This 31.5" display is a major upgrade in almost every way from the previous model. Let's check it out. ...Read more...

The whole point of all this PC personalization that folks do these days is to express their individuality. Colored case lighting goes a long way toward that goal, but what if your tastes change faster than your underwear? You need addressable RGB LED lights. Cooler Master's first all-in-one liquid coolers with addressable RGB LEDs are the MasterLiquid ML120R and MasterLiquid ML240R. The company first talked about these coolers at CES, and now they're available for sale. We have the full details, too, so let's dig in.

Bigger plans there were. Alas, I ran out of time. Maybe next year, though...

Controversy has been swirling around the purported effects of Nvidia's GeForce Partner Program on board partners who sell both GeForces and Radeons over the past few weeks. Although the program first came to light in a rather anodyne blog post promising "transparency" and "consistency" for DIY gamers shopping for graphics cards, HardOCP's Kyle Bennett secured quotes from industry members to the effect that signing up for the program as a manufacturer brings with it a range of chafing restrictions.Most notably, Bennett's anonymous sources suggest that the GPP requires companies who want to sell GeForces in their products to keep their "Gaming Brand Exclusively Aligned with GeForce." In Bennett's example, if Asus were to hypothetically ...Read more...

MSI's Vortex G25 line of pint-sized gaming PCs crams prodigious power into just 2.5 L, but all play and no work just doesn't pay the bills for most folks. With that in mind, the company's engineers scooped out the high-flying Nvidia GeForce graphics cards from the G25s and replaced them with Quadro P52000s in order to create the Vortex W25 compact workstation. The company also announced forthcoming updates to its three lines of workstation laptops.

Finally! Folks, this week I'm finally getting some sunshine! Sure, it's going to be miserable in the weekend, which is certainly not ideal, but I'm not complaining right now after about three months of near-constant raining. At last, I can actually smell spring and see what the sky looks like. That's made hunting for deals a much easier task than usual. Check out our bounty today. ...Read more...

Contemporary anti-virus products don't have the same impact on system performance that they did back in the single-core days, but they can still eat a hefty chunk of CPU speed. A new technology from Intel called Accelerated Memory Scanning (AMS) could help with reducing scanning load on machines with Skylake-and-newer CPUs. The idea is that the machine can offload scanning and detection of memory-based malware to its integrated graphics processor. ...Read more...

Samsung dual-wields its popular Galaxy S and Galaxy Note handsets to defend its dominant position in the realm of high-end Android smartphones. That one-two punch hasn't stopped rivals like Sony from trying to dethrone the Korean electronics manufacturing juggernaut, though. The Trinitron-maker's latest volley, the Xperia XZ2 Premium, combines the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC that also cycles away inside Samsung's Galaxy S9 with a 5.7" 3840x2160 HDR LCD display. ...Read more...

Samsung dual-wields its popular Galaxy S and Galaxy Note handsets to defend its dominant position in the realm of high-end Android smartphones. That one-two punch hasn't stopped rivals like Sony from trying to dethrone the Korean electronics manufacturing juggernaut, though. The Trinitron-maker's latest volley, the Xperia XZ2 Premium, combines the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC that also cycles away inside Samsung's Galaxy S9 with a 5.7" 3840x2160 HDR LCD display. ...Read more...

The rushed release of Intel's eighth-generation Core Coffee Lake processors late last year was almost certainly a reaction to the splash that rival AMD made in launching its up-to-eight-core Ryzen desktop chips in March 2017. Even with the Ryzen-matching performance of the Core i7-8700K, many were left wondering when Intel would truly match AMD's core counts on its mainstream desktop platform. A set of confidential documents in the silicon maker's Coffee Lake S technical library suggests that Intel loyalists wishing for eight cores and 16 threads without the expense of the company's X299 platform might have new options in the near future. ...Read more...

Savvy gerbils already know this, but once you're in the realm of solid-state storage, performance differences between similar drives become less relevant than feature sets. One of those features is hardware-based encryption, something you don't see much on entry-level drives. That's why Kingston's UV500 SATA SSDs are interesting, as they combine high-density 3D TLC NAND flash memory with a Marvell controller that supports TCG Opal 2.0 encryption. ...Read more...

Lian Li released its PC-O11 E-ATX chassis just a couple of months ago, but that case's blend of tempered glass, rectilinear styling, and jumbo-size capacity wasn't enough for Roman "der8auer" Hartung. The Taiwanese case manufacturer and the famed German overclocker have teamed up on a tweaked-and-trimmed "Dynamic" version of the case. ...Read more...

Were you a Ninten-nerd or a Gene-goob? Sega has been out of the gaming hardware market since 2001, but back when I was in school the rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was possibly the single largest social force within my peer group. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Sega Mega Drive—better known as the Genesis here in the 'states. To celebrate, Sega announced at its FES 2018 fan event that the Mega Drive Mini will be launching this year. ...Read more...