Techreport

Being a part of the so-called "PC gaming master race" usually means having access to bigger things, like larger resolutions and higher framerates thanks to ludicrously-powerful graphics cards like Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. One area where PC gaming has typically trailed mainstream consoles is screen size, though. Nvidia's is looking to put an end to that deficit with its Big Format Gaming Display initiative. Asus' ROG Swift PG65 is one of the first displays to be part of that program. ...Read more...

Solid state drives that leverage the NVMe protocol offer an undeniable performance advantage over their SATA counterparts, but their relatively high cost (and the generally high cost of RAM and NAND chips right now) have kept us from making them regular recommendations in our system guides. It's possible, though, that Toshiba's new RC100 line of drives could be the value champions that this market needs.

Nvidia's G-Sync tech powers smooth PC gaming experiences on desktop gaming monitors, and its Shield Android TV set-top box delivers gaming and streaming content to the big screen using a powerful SoC. It's only natural, then, that the company is announcing an initiative to bring PC gaming, G-Sync, big screens, and Shield-powered entertainment together in the living room.

When you want to show a movie to a whole bunch of people at once, you can't beat a projector. As we move into the 4K era, projectors must naturally come along. LG's just announced its first 4K UHD projector, the HU80KA. The company says the compact unit can throw up a 150" area for displaying HDR10 content. ...Read more...

Intel's latest ultra-low-power 15-W mobile processors likely have more than a few gerbils thinking that it's time for a new notebook, since these new CPUs generally offer more cores and threads than last year's offerings, all in the same power envelope. To tempt folks into splurging on a new machine, Samsung is updating its Notebook 7 Spin with a new eighth-gen Core i5 processor, a reasonably-sized SSD, and active pen support. ...Read more...

AMD's Ryzen Threadripper is a big mamma-jamma. The TR4 socket retention assembly itself takes up a bit over 14 square inches of space on the board. Four DDR4 memory channels and all of their associated traces add to that large footprint. ASRock's X399M Taichi is the first motherboard that manages to squeeze Threadripper's 16-core, 32-thread goodness into the microATX form factor. The small TR4 mobo has four DDR4 DIMM slots and three full-speed PCIe x16 slots. ...Read more...

When we checked in with Adata last summer, the company made it clear that it was focusing on M.2 and PCIe storage, potentially even phasing out SATA drives. The collection of hardware that Adata will show off at this year's CES demonstrates the company's focus on contemporary and upcoming form factors. Adata has a variety of new products to show off, including SX8200 M.2 SSDs, a next-generation small form factor (NGSFF) SSD, and new Spectrix memory modules. ...Read more...

The two latest vendors to react to what may be some of the most wide-ranging computer security flaws ever found are Apple and Nvidia. Both companies have released statements about the exploits, information about affected hardware, and their plans for dealing with these infosec disasters. If you're impatient, the short version is that both Apple and Nvidia either have fixes in place already or are planning to release them posthaste.Nvidia isn't a company you probably think of when you think of "CPUs", but the company's graphics processors are apparently impacted in some way by the security holes. The guys in green don't go into great detail, but have released a security bulletin saying that its GPU drivers are "potentially affected" by two of the three variant attacks. Nvidia lists those ...Read more...

Some of us start off a new year with a renewed commitment to exercising at the gym. Lenovo is starting off 2018 by enticing professionals with a new pair of displays. The larger ThinkVision P32u offers brilliant colors and Thunderbolt 3 daisychaining, while the ThinkVision X24 may attract more than a few glances with its ultra-thin design. ...Read more...

Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) can be pretty awesome, even if getting access to the 40 Gbps of bandwidth isn't as straightforward as Intel has advertised. The standard has yet to really spread across the entire PC market, as it's currently reserved primarily for relatively high-end laptops and Apple's premium products. Intel is hoping to spread the adoption of TB3 with its just-announced JHL7x40 "Titan Ridge" series of TB3 controller chips.The new silicon doesn't crank up the peak available bandwidth when compared to the current-gen Alpine Ridge parts, but it does add support for the DisplayPort 1.4 standard , up from version 1.2. Perhaps more interestingly, ...Read more...

The world and its dog have been following the rather scary story of the Meltdown and Spectre CPU exploits. As a quick recap, a security vulnerability in most modern CPUs allows a standard unprivileged program to extract sensitive information in memory, like passwords and encryption keys. Intel CPUs are particularly affected since the Meltdown vulnerability is apparently specific to them. The company's now issued a statement saying it's "made significant progress" in deploying software patches and firmware updates to partners that will make its chips "immune" to the exploits.Intel says that it already has patches in place for "the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years." The company's own list of affected CPUs extends much farther back than that, so it's ...Read more...

Lenovo's taking the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as an opportunity to introduce a complete refresh of the Thinkpad laptop series. CES doesn't actually start until next week, but Lenovo's already showing its hand. Updated ThinkPad X- and T-series models are complemented with an all-new ThinkPad L series.

Fun fact, it's also National Trivia Day, but that's harder to find an image for.

Asus was one of the first companies to experiment with external graphics adapters for laptops when it showed off the XG Station all the way back in 2007. The use of graphics silicon for purposes other than gaming has spread in the intervening decade, as has the convenience factor of external graphics adapters. Asus has now teamed with boutique case manufacturer In Win to create the XG Station Pro, a Thunderbolt 3 external graphics dock designed for content creation and CAD professionals that need the capabilities of power-hungry GPUs at their desks and the portability and battery life of an ultrabook when out of the office. ...Read more...

Remember that 8K display from the other day? Driving such a display can be difficult simply due to the challenge of sending a signal to it. Recent revisions of the DisplayPort standard are up to the task, but you'll need quality cables to keep signal integrity. Finding those cables should be a bit easier soon, at least. The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) just announced a new DP8K certification for existing cables that marks them as ready for high-throughput connections. ...Read more...

Samsung just announced the latest member of its Exynos family of system-on-chips. The Exynos 9810 marries an eight-core CPU with powerful image-processing hardware, deep learning acceleration, and a refined LTE modem. ...Read more...

Dell's XPS 13 laptop has become a pretty familiar sight for ultrabook shoppers since its introduction halfway through Barack Obama's second term in office. The thin-and-light machine has always used razor-thin bezels to pack a 13" screen into a frame size that would typically accommodate an 11" display.The company has upgraded the XPS 13's specs and added a 2-in-1 version over the intervening three years, but the time has come for the laptop's biggest work-over yet. The 2018 take on the XPS 13 claims to be 30% thinner ...Read more...

After building speculation fueled by media reports (including our own) ahead of a planned coordinated release, researchers at Google, academic institutions, and other companies have revealed a pair of attack classes this afternoon that exploit fundamental operating principles of modern CPUs to allow attackers to arbitrarily read data from the memory of vulnerable systems.The first, called "Meltdown," breaks down CPU-level protections that prevent unprivileged applications from reading arbitrary system memory, including privileged memory locations corresponding ...Read more...

The market for PC laptops includes entries with large, high-resolution displays, but sometimes even a built-in 17.3" 4K panel just isn't enough. At last year's CES, Razer showed off its Project Valkyrie triple-screen prototype laptop, but Asus' two-pronged approach to the mobile screen space conundrum is a bit more practical. Those needing lots of pixels and professional-grade color accuracy should cast their eyes at the company's OLED ProArt PQ22UC, while those that need improved portability can check out the ZenScreen Go MB16AP with its built-in battery. ...Read more...

Update 1/3/2018 2:20 PM: Intel has issued a statement regarding this potential vulnerability. The company claims its CPUs are not uniquely affected by the root cause that has provoked the changes to the virtual memory layouts in common operating systems, that reports attributing this issue to a "bug" or a "flaw" in Intel CPUs are incorrect, and that it is working with ARM, AMD, and operating system vendors to "develop an industry-wide approach to resolve this issue promptly and constructively." Intel's statements would appear to directly contradict statements from AMD employees regarding the nature of this potential vulnerability, so we await further details of the security issue to be disclosed next week. The original post continues below.Like many TR readers, we are following news regarding a potential hardware-level security flaw in a range of Intel CPUs. Absent an official statement from Intel or operating system vendors, however, we are holding off on attempting a ...Read more...

Like many TR readers, we are following news regarding a potential hardware-level security flaw in a range of Intel CPUs. Absent an official statement from Intel or operating system vendors, however, we are holding off on attempting a detailed report on this issue or issues because the cart seems to have gotten in front of the horse on what exactly is going on and the people in the know may be bound by a non-disclosure agreement.What we do know from initial reports around this vulnerability is that a series of Linux kernel patches to implement kernel page table isolation (KPTI) are in the works . The goal of KPTI is to segregate user and kernel memory mappings in virtual ...Read more...

Whether due to connotations of manliness or an association with popular action shooter games, military aesthetics are always popular with certain people. G.Skill appears to be seeking to serve that segment with its latest memory modules. The new Sniper X DDR4 memory series looks similar to the company's flagship Ripjaws series in specifications, but wraps the modules in a metallic exterior with camouflage accents. ...Read more...

Howdy, gerbils! We figure you're still reeling from New Year's festivities. We hope you didn't have too much to drink and then proceed to make too many online purchases under the influence. After all, you'll need your credit card fresh and ready because we scoured the lands of e-tailers and found the best hardware deals for you today. ...Read more...

Our testing demonstrates that Thunderbolt 3 isn't the panacea for laptop gaming that some expected, but the interface does make it convenient to attach a compatible notebook to a larger display. Samsung's CJ791 curved 34" QLED monitor makes it easy for mobile users to use a single cable to connect to a big, high-res display that doubles as a power source. ...Read more...

Folks looking for a monitor capable of high-dynamic-range output (HDR) breathed a sigh of relief last month when the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) introduced a set of standards for what consumers should expect from a monitor with the HDR label. Asus is one of the first manufacturers to announce a display that's certified under the new spec: the ProArt PA27AC. ...Read more...

Ironically, I just can't come up with a good caption for today's image...

The wide-ranging backward compatibility of the PC is one of its greatest strengths as a gaming platform, but folks trying to step back just a few years on their Radeon-equipped rigs might be having trouble right now. The Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition release apparently broke a significant part of the DirectX 9 driver stack for the red team's video cards. Fortunately, Terry Makedon—director of roadmap, strategy, marketing and user experience for AMD GPU software—says AMD is hard at work on a hotfix for at least some of the affected titles. ...Read more...

The biggest news in PC hardware in 2017 was AMD's return to the mainstream and high-end desktop spaces with its Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper CPUs. Qualcomm and Microsoft spent the year working to bring Redmond's OS and the associated software to a new class of ARM-powered laptops. In all the hubbub, one could be forgiven for forgetting that Via Technologies also has a license to produce x86-compatible processors. Chinese site EEFocus reports that Zhaoxin Semiconductor, Via's joint venture with the Chinese government, has announced the KX-5000 line of x86-64-compatible chips, which it claims are the first Chinese processors with full integration of platform controller chips and dual-channel DDR4 memory controllers. ...Read more...

At next week's CES show in Las Vegas, LG Display will be showing what it claims is the largest-ever OLED display. The new screen boasts an 88-inch diagonal and has a resolution of 7680x4320—better known as UHD 8K. That's four times the pixels of the most common "4K" display, and sixteen times the pixels of your typical 1920x1080 (or "1080p") monitor. Don't expect retina-class pixel density from those arrangements, though, as the 88-inch monster only rings in at 100 ppi. ...Read more...

Intel's Indian web site leaked some tasty details of the company's upcoming CPU with Radeon graphics on package yesterday. One of those CPUs, now officially known as the Core i7-8809G, showed up on the company's overclockable desktop CPU list before being scrubbed. The leak revealed several tantalizing new facts about this union of blue-team and red-team technologies. ...Read more...

Adata is following in the footsteps of fellow memory-and-storage vendors like Corsair, Kingston, and G.Skill by expanding its brand into the realm of PC gaming peripherals. The fruits of the company's latest expansion are the Infarex M10 Gaming Mouse and Infarex R10 Mousepad. The mouse and pad come packaged together and both light up the room with integrated RGB LED illumination. ...Read more...

In the wake of Apple's recent revelations regarding reduced performance of iPhones with aged batteries, major Android device makers have gone on the record to make hay of Cupertino's woes. LG and Samsung both provided statements to Phone Arena confirming that they don't reduce performance to compensate for battery aging, and HTC and Motorola both told The Verge that they don't include battery age in the processor power management decisions of their devices.Although these statements certainly sound positive and user-friendly in light of Apple's revelations—who wants their device to slow down as it ages?—they also carefully skirt the underlying issue that Apple claims it's trying to solve through the power-management behavior it's instituted on its older phones. Apple's statement yesterday specifically notes that the company implemented ...Read more...

Building a machine in 2017 was painful. Here at the end of the year, we're looking at average per-gigabyte SSD prices that are the same or even higher than they were a year ago. It's a frustrating situation. According to the state-run China Daily newspaper, that nation's National Development and Reform Commission is getting fed up with NAND chip prices as well. The paper quotes an official with the NDRC who says that the commission "will pay more attention to future problems that may be caused by 'price fixing'" in the memory market.

Some PC enthusiasts put a priority on cramming as much power as possible into compact Mini-ITX (or smaller) enclosures. DeepCool's jumbo-size Quadstellar goes in the opposite direction, providing ample room to spread heat-generating components into four separate cooling zones. Each of those zones has a large active inlet shutter that can open when temperatures start to rise. ...Read more...

Over the past few days, there's been a furor regarding the performance of some aging iPhones on the popular Geekbench benchmark under iOS 10.2.1 and newer. Testing by a number of users on Reddit and by Geekbench maker Primate Labs itself revealed that some iPhones were putting up lower single-core Geekbench scores than others with the newer software, leading to outraged iPhone owners and a wide range of inflammatory headlines.Apple responded to the controversy by acknowledging that recent versions of iOS "smooth out" peak power demands to prevent the annoying sudden shutdowns that have plagued some iPhone owners, ...Read more...

While AMD's Ryzen processors generally chat directly with graphics cards and NVMe storage devices over 8 GT/s PCIe 3.0 lanes, peripherals attached through existing 300-series chipsets are limited to the bandwidth offered by PCIe 2.0 lanes. The company's upcoming 400-series chipsets could bring PCIe 3.0 capabilities to all slots of future Ryzen motherboards, according to recent updates in the PCI-SIG Integrator's List.As a refresher, AMD's Ryzen chips communicate directly with storage devices over four dedicated PCIe 3.0 lanes, with another 16 top-speed lanes set out for one or two graphics cards. Another four PCIe 3.0 lanes attach ...Read more...

Greetings, gerbils. If you've been feeling like it's been a really slow week news-wise, you're not alone. We'd wager that CES 2018 is going to be a non-stop announcement fest, since PR departments everywhere seem to be saving up their shots for two weeks from now. Even still, daily life at hardware e-tailers goes on, and we dug up today's best deals for you. ...Read more...

Jeff says "RIP GR Tron"

The almost-past year of 2017 was a big one for CPU technology announcements. We got AMD's Ryzen and Threadripper units plus Intel's Core X family and a range of Coffee Lake processors. Over on the graphics card aisle, we got the mighty GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and AMD's Radeon RX Vega 56 and Vega 64 cards.With all that new hardware, we bet that more than a few of you took the upgrade plunge and built spankin' new systems for yourselves, friends, or family. But time goes on ...Read more...

A while back, we reported on G.Skill's then-fastest SO-DIMMs running at 3800 MT/s. The company has since released mini-modules running at 4 GT/s, but both of those ultra-high-speed kits top out at 32 GB. There are few uses for a four-module SO-DIMM kit, and one of them is in the very ASRock X299E-ITX/ac motherboard that G.Skill uses for testing. If you want to fully outfit that board with 64 GB of top-speed DDR4, you'll need G.Skill's newest kit of Ripjaws SO-DIMMs with its four 16 GB modules at 3466 MT/s. ...Read more...

As enthusiasts, we tend to bloviate about the beauty of high-resolution HDR displays with IPS and VA panels, but the fact remains that most folks are perfectly fine with regular old TN LCDs. Certainly for a competitive gaming workload, the most important part of a display's performance is its motion clarity. We've seen 240-Hz monitors before, but LG's 27GK750F-B is the first of its kind to also include a blur-reducing backlight. ...Read more...

Good morning, gerbils. We hope you haven't put on too much weight over Christmas. After all, we wouldn't want you to be so pudgy that you can't get your credit card out of your wallet. We bet you're still dying for hardware deals. Here's what we found for you today. ...Read more...

Close enough.

Greetings, gerbils! Christmas day may be just around the corner, but there's still one final issue to take care of. I'm sure you've been waiting with bated breath for the reveal of the winners in TR's 2017 Christmas giveaway. Well, start the drum roll—here they are. ...Read more...

If you feel your wallet tugging itself from your pocket, gerbils, it's because it's time once again for yet another game sale. The Steam Winter Sale is in full swing. As usual, we've taken up the task of trawling the store pages for the best deals.

Acer's 14" Swift 3 has rapidly become one of my favorite budget laptops of the year. The version with a GeForce MX150 inside is especially compelling. It's not any heavier or thicker than its Intel IGP-powered counterpart, yet it provides fine basic gaming experiences with today's most popular titles and can even run older AAA titles plenty well at lower resolutions. The Core i5-8250U is also an impressively powerful and power-efficient chip, delivering a huge performance boost to ultrabooks like this one. Best of all, Newegg has been offering compelling prices on these machines lately. You can get one today for $659.99 with promo code GAMEWNE20—the lowest price we've seen so far for such a system. ...Read more...

Nvidia announced the end of driver support for certain operating systems and some driver features in three separate support posts yesterday. The big news is the end of driver support for 32-bit OSes after driver version 390 comes around. Smaller notes include the upcoming discontinuation of driver support for the NVS 310 and NVS 315 business graphics cards, and the end of support for quad-buffered stereo features starting with driver version 396.Nvidia says that drivers after the 390 branch will not install or work on 32-bit Windows, Linux, or FreeBSD operating systems. The notes also say that future feature enhancements and optimizations will not be rolled back into older driver versions. Nvidia says it will provide "low ...Read more...

Go ahead, complain about how this is actually tempura.

We've seen a number of external graphics enclosures from PC parts manufacturers at the beginning of the alphabet, and now Zotac is entering the fray with the Amp Box and the diminutive Amp Box Mini. Both of Zotac's boxes are smaller than some of the units we've seen, which makes sense given the company's fetish for making mighty-mite video cards like the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Mini. ...Read more...

Hello, gerbils. 'Tis almost the night before Christmas, and decorated pine trees everywhere probably have more than a few boxes laying underneath them by now. There's still time to do some last-minute shopping, though. To help with that endeavor, we've scoured the e-tailer lands and bring you the best deals we found. Here's what we have for today. ...Read more...