Techreport

Toshiba isn't the only company with new embedded storage products to show. Samsung is firing back today with a volley of its own: new UFS SSDs that store up to 512 GB of data in a single BGA package. Naturally, the new storage devices are based on the company's 3D V-NAND flash and integrate eight 512 Gb (64 GB) dies with a proprietary controller chip. ...Read more...

The Raspberry Pi and its ilk generally lack the computing horsepower of a modern desktop or laptop computer, but one area where they excel is in physical computing, or interacting with a wide range of devices that control things in the real world. Typical PCs lack general-purpose input-output (GPIO) interfaces, and when they exist, the documentation is typically very poor.To make the best of both worlds, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has now come up with a tool called the GPIO expander to shuttle data from a powerful computer into and out of the real world using a Raspberry Pi Zero's GPIO pins. This tool lets the Pi serve as ...Read more...

We were a bit disappointed by the battery life of the HP Envy x360 convertible laptop when we tested the machine at the end of last month. The machine, powered by AMD's latest Raven Ridge APU, was unable to deliver the same staying power as an Acer Swift 3 bearing Intel's almost-as-new Core i5-8250U CPU and Nvidia's GeForce MX150 discrete graphics. We endeavored to remove different screen sizes from the battery equation and were still left with a puzzling account of the HP's longevity. Now Laptop Mag has tested versions of the Envy x360 bearing AMD and Intel processors against one another. The good news, if it can be called that, is that battery life across both machines is about as disappointing. ...Read more...

GeForce GTX 1070 Ti cards all run pretty much the same clock rates out of the box. Whether this is due to a mandate from Nvidia or some other factor, we can't say for sure. Aorus' pragmatically-named GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8G card is strikingly similar on the surface to its Gigabyte-branded cousin, but it boasts a higher 88-MHz overclock in its OC mode. ...Read more...

Toshiba's BiCS3 flash is showing up everywhere. The latest place where the high-density flash will be showing its face is in smartphones, tablets, and other space-constrained spots. The company has announced that it's started sampling new UFS 2.1-compliant BGA SSDs that can hit up to 900 MB/s in sequential reads. ...Read more...

Custom liquid-cooling hardware and closed-loop AIOs get considerable attention from enthusiasts and cooling part makers. As efficient as a liquid-cooling system can be, though, air coolers are still tough to beat when it comes to simplicity and noise. Japanese outfit Scythe's latest Sengokubune is the newest model in the company's line of high-performance air coolers. Those hoping to fit one of these copper-and-aluminum sculptures into a tiny Mini-ITX build might want to keep in mind that the name refers to a boat (thanks, Zak). ...Read more...

Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has released its latest report on the state of the discrete graphics card market. According to the company, overall graphics card shipments had a 29.1% quarterly increase in Q3 2017, over double the ten-year average increase of 14% when comparing Q3 to the preceeding quarter. That increase in graphics card sales reportedly outpaced the 21.2% quarterly increase in PC shipments, too. ...Read more...

AMD's Ryzen Mobile APUs are some of the most exciting products to launch in the PC space this year, and as enthusiasts, we wanted to channel that excitement by getting a review of one of those systems for our readers as quickly as possible. Our initial results showed promising performance for the chip, but some potentially less-promising numbers for battery life. ...Read more...

Thermaltake's got a new case in its Core series of open-frame tower chassis, and this one might be the coolest yet. Like a lot of modern case designs, the Core P90 has two separate spaces for components. The interesting part is that this chassis sets its "chambers" at a 90° angle from each other. The result is a steel-and-glass enclosure that would fit just right in the corner of a room. ...Read more...

Intel's desktop Coffee Lake Core i5 and Core i7 processors bring a lot of muscle to the desktop, but some situations call for nuance and a more compact chassis. Zotac's latest Zbox MI640 nano and Zbox MI660 nano employ the blue silicon giant's Kaby Lake-R 15 W mobile chips to provide enough computing power for most day-to-day tasks. ...Read more...

It's getting to be about time for an upgrade, and I'm thinking real hard about Intel's X299 platform for my next build. If you're in the same boat, take a look at Gigabyte's newest motherboards for Core i9 CPUs. The X299 Designare EX is the company's latest showpiece. Meanwhile, the X299 Aorus Ultra Gaming Pro has an ostentatious name, though it's a relatively small update to the already-fancy X299 Ultra Gaming. ...Read more...

That should do it.

The work of a driver software programmer is never done. New driver packages are needed for game releases or to lift performance that doesn't match expectations. Nowadays, VR versions of existing titles are another reason for driver devs to put their noses to the grindstone. Nvidia's team has done just that and released the GeForce 388.43 drivers with support for id Software's Doom VFR. The game is exclusively for HTC's Vive headset and lists a GeForce GTX 1070 as part of its minimum system requirements. ...Read more...

Good afternoon, dear gerbils and gerbilettes. I bet your credit cards are already smoking hot and worn from all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday activity. But we know that a PC enthusiast's quest for hardware never ends, and no matter how many sale days there are in a year, they're never enough. The quest goes on. Let's see what we have in store for today. ...Read more...

It's the last day of November 2017. Tomorrow we step into the final month of the year, but there's still time for one more November driver update. Appropriately numbered 17.11.4, the latest Radeon driver release is tuned to support Doom VFR and the the open beta of Oculus' Dash software. ...Read more...

A little under three years ago, AMD began a tradition that's become as ingrained as Thanksgiving and Christmas: major year-end driver update packages with sweeping bug fixes and major new features. That tradition started with Catalyst Omega, continued with Radeon Software Crimson Edition, and bore even more fruit with Radeon Software Crimson Relive Edition (and its 17.7.2 mid-cycle update). This morning, AMD is announcing the existence (though not the details) of its next major driver update: Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition. ...Read more...

Philips announced a new display today that's seemingly aimed at the crowd looking to bridge the gap between a television and a computer monitor. The Philips Momentum 356M6QJAB/11 is a massive 35" IPS monitor with LED backlighting. The display sports a relatively low resolution of 1920x1080 and a pretty-standard response time of 5 ms. ...Read more...

Yesterday on Twitter, developer Lemi Orhan Ergin informed Apple of a major vulnerability in macOS 10.13, also known as High Sierra. Ergin found that on systems in their default configurations, one could simply type "root" as a username in certain privilege-escalation dialogs, leave the password field blank, and then click "Unlock" repeatedly to gain superuser access. Today, Apple has rushed out a patch for the issue. ...Read more...

We've heard the complaint more than once: "I'd buy a Radeon RX Vega, but I don't want one with the reference cooler." Until very recently, that simply meant not getting an RX Vega at all. Things are changing, though, and now a few vendors are offering custom-cooled cards bearing AMD's finest. Long-time Radeon stalwart Powercolor is naturally among that list, and the company's upcoming Red Devil RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64 cards are triple-slot and triple-fan monsters. ...Read more...

Cards based on AMD's Radeon RX Vega reference design seem to be getting harder and harder to obtain, so it's no shock that custom cards seem ready to fill the gap. Gigabyte has taken the wraps off of its first custom Vega offering, the Radeon RX Vega 64 Gaming OC 8G. ...Read more...

Samsung announced today that its S3 manufacturing line in Hwaseong, South Korea has started fabrication of SoCs on 10LPP, the company's second-generation 10-nm FinFET process technology. The electronics manufacturer says 10LPP allows for 10% higher performance or 15% lower power consumption compared to 10 LPE, its existing 10-nm node. Samsung says the second-generation process should lead to increased yields and reduced time in the transition from chip development to mass production.

Windows 10's interface is defined, obviously, by the eponymous "windows." It's useful sometimes to have more than one layer of compartmentalization for tasks and ideas, though. For example, you might have a web browser and a PDF reader, each with many separate tabs. Along those lines, Microsoft just announced an upcoming (and completely optional) interface paradigm for Windows 10 called Sets. ...Read more...

Plain, featureless front panels and tempered glass sides are current trends in PC enclosure design, but the combination of these features has led to some cases that can't keep the RGB-LED-festooned parts inside particularly cool. SilverStone's new Primera PM02 chassis ditches clunky-looking external drive bays and perforates the entire front panel with plenty of holes that look ready to provide prodigious air flow. The PM02 is one of the few cases we've seen with a front-panel-mounted USB 3.1 Type-C connector, too. ...Read more...

I want to go to there.

HDMI 2.0 ouputs and their support for 3840x2160 resolution at 60 Hz are still not ubiquitous even on brand-new PCs. As an example, the UHD Graphics unit included in Intel's latest eighth-generation Core processors needs help from a converter chip to achieve that resolution and refresh rate. The HDMI Forum is nevertheless charging ahead and has released the HDMI 2.1 specification. The new spec includes support for resolutions up to 10K (10240x4320) at refresh rates up to 120 Hz. The mandatory Ultra High Speed HDMI cable can now carry up to 48 Gbps and allows for Display Strem Compression (DSC).Among other features, HDMI 2.1 also supports variable refresh rates, an automatic low-latency mode, and HDR metadata. HDR support is extended from a using a single image descriptor for an entire piece of content to ...Read more...

When we talked about the Asus WS X299 Pro, the comments had some grumbling about the X299 platform's lack of ECC support. Well, here's your board, boys. The WS C422 Pro/SE is the exact same motherboard as the WS X299 Pro, except that it swaps the consumer X299 chipset for a proper workstation-focused C422 offering. Throw in a compatible Skylake-W Xeon CPU (and it'll have to be a Xeon—no Core i9s are supported) and you can outfit yourself with up to 512 GB of quad-channel ECC memory. ...Read more...

Custom liquid-cooling systems can deliver amazing looks and unbeatable cooling performance, but considering all the variables of such a system is tricky and the costs of all those individual parts add up quickly. EK Water Blocks' EK-MLC Phoenix line of pre-filled waterblocks and radiator-pump units lets liquid-cooling fanatics assemble a custom loop tailored to their systems without spilling coolant, purging air out of lines, or worrying about fitting tightness. ...Read more...

El Dealino is back. The killer of dollar signs, slaughterer of price tags, collector of coupons. From underneath his poncho he produces uncountable hardware offers and promotional codes, slinging them with force to everyone who's willing to catch them. Let's see what he's brought today.Peripherals ...Read more...

Roccat made its name in the gaming peripheral market with the original Kone laser gaming mouse, and the company recently celebrated the 10 year anniversary of that product's launch with the release of the Kone Aimo. Roccat released a lot of revisions of the Kone over the years, and the Kone Aimo appears to be the culmination of the company's efforts. The new Kone skips the laser sensor of ages past for Roccat's fancy Owl-Eye optical sensor based on a customized version of the popular PixArt PMW3360. ...Read more...

Folks who are after a graphics upgrade but have been teetering on the fence between the green and red teams could be tempted by a promotion AMD is running right now. Any new purchaser of a Radeon RX Vega 56 or RX Vega 64 is eligible to get free copies of Prey and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. If the offer of those titles sounds familiar, it's because they were part of the RX Vega packs that AMD made available at launch.

The Microsoft of old used its globe-dominating Office suite as a way to keep people in its ecosystem, producing only versions for Windows and Apple's Macintosh. The company changed its tune a great deal under the leadership of Satya Nadella, offering up Office for iOS devices and Android. After the release of a version of Windows seemingly pointed right at Google's second OS, Redmond is now rolling out Microsoft Office for all Chromebooks capable of running Android apps.

... And if you have no idea where that's from, you should be ashamed of yourself. It is with utmost pleasure that we report that after today's downtime, The Tech Report supports HTTPS connections across the entire site. If you have no idea what that means, then take notice of the green padlock icon in your address bar and know that that's a Good Thing.Although a simple icon isn't much to talk about, this was quite a big production behind the scenes. As it turns out, "just changing the links" isn't something that is as quickly accomplished as it is described, and doing HTTPS like ...Read more...

Hi guys! I'm interrupting the scheduled programming to let you guys know that we're setting up a site upgrade tomorrow, November 25, at around 11:00 Central Time. We expect site downtime from one to two hours, so don't freak out if you can't reach us around that time.When it's back, should everything go according to plan, we'll have SSL support across the whole site. If anyone's ...Read more...

Hi guys! I'm interrupting the scheduled programming to let you guys know that we're setting up a site upgrade tomorrow, November 25, at around 11:00 Central Time. We expect site downtime from one to two hours, so don't freak out if you can't reach us around that time.When it's back, should everything go according to plan, we'll have SSL support across the whole site. If anyone's ...Read more...

Greetings, gerbils! This is where I'd write some sort of witty intro, if I had one. It's Black Friday and there's a lot of deals everywhere. We separated wheat from chaff, and as you can imagine, we have an extra-long list today. Let's get right to it.Monitors ...Read more...

Greetings, gerbils! This is where I'd write some sort of witty intro, if I had one. It's Black Friday and there's a lot of deals everywhere. We separated wheat from chaff, and as you can imagine, we have an extra-long list today. Let's get right to it.Monitors ...Read more...

Open up your wallets, PC gamers, because Steam's running a pretty darn good sale right now. It's called the Steam Autumn Sale, and the fact that it takes place at the same time as the Black Friday-to-Cyber-Monday weekend of unrestrained consumerism is certainly entirely coincidental. There are over six thousand games deeply discounted right now. As usual, we've scoured the sale for the best offers so you can game while you gorge.

Open up your wallets, PC gamers, because Steam's running a pretty darn good sale right now. It's called the Steam Autumn Sale, and the fact that it takes place at the same time as the Black Friday-to-Cyber-Monday weekend of unrestrained consumerism is certainly entirely coincidental. There are over six thousand games deeply discounted right now. As usual, we've scoured the sale for the best offers so you can game while you gorge.

The holiday shopping season officially gets underway today, and a select few gerbils that have been really good all year might want to put Gigabyte's X299 Aorus Gaming 7 Pro motherboard on their wish lists. The Gaming 7 Pro supports Intel's Core X processors all the way up to the mighty 18-core Core i9-7980XE CPU. This board's big feature is its 12-phase VRM with an Intersil PWM controller and integrated power stages. We were quite impressed with Gigabyte's Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard and its similar VRM components. ...Read more...

The holiday shopping season officially gets underway today, and a select few gerbils that have been really good all year might want to put Gigabyte's X299 Aorus Gaming 7 Pro motherboard on their wish lists. The Gaming 7 Pro supports Intel's Core X processors all the way up to the mighty 18-core Core i9-7980XE CPU. This board's big feature is its 12-phase VRM with an Intersil PWM controller and integrated power stages. We were quite impressed with Gigabyte's Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard and its similar VRM components. ...Read more...

The holiday shopping season officially gets underway today, and a select few gerbils that have been really good all year might want to put Gigabyte's X299 Aorus Gaming 7 Pro motherboard on their wish lists. The Gaming 7 Pro supports Intel's Core X processors all the way up to the mighty 18-core Core i9-7980XE CPU. This board's big feature is its 12-phase VRM with an Intersil PWM controller and integrated power stages. We were quite impressed with Gigabyte's Aorus Gaming 7 Z370 motherboard and its similar VRM components. ...Read more...

Proto-relish.

Proto-relish.

Fully-transparent side panels have clearly been a big trend in enthusiast PC cases in 2017. The trouble for some users is that most new enclosures with the shiny see-through sides don't have any provisions for front-mounted devices like optical drives and card readers. FSP's new CMT110A and CMT120A cases allow those attached to their optical drives to bask in the glow of all of their RGB LED-illuminated components while still enjoying their Quake 2 installer dics and Bad Boys II DVDs. ...Read more...

Fully-transparent side panels have clearly been a big trend in enthusiast PC cases in 2017. The trouble for some users is that most new enclosures with the shiny see-through sides don't have any provisions for front-mounted devices like optical drives and card readers. FSP's new CMT110A and CMT120A cases allow those attached to their optical drives to bask in the glow of all of their RGB LED-illuminated components while still enjoying their Quake 2 installer dics and Bad Boys II DVDs. ...Read more...

Good day, gerbils. I'm half-dead with cold and flu, my throat is raw, my eyes look like tomatoes, and I feel like I lost a slap match against B.J. Blazkowicz. The only thing that gives me reprieve from these terrible ailments is a good, healthy dosage of hardware deals. I have procured them, and I shall share them with you. ...Read more...

Good day, gerbils. I'm half-dead with cold and flu, my throat is raw, my eyes look like tomatoes, and I feel like I lost a slap match against B.J. Blazkowicz. The only thing that gives me reprieve from these terrible ailments is a good, healthy dosage of hardware deals. I have procured them, and I shall share them with you. ...Read more...

Gaming monitors are a well-defined category. They have high refresh rates, usually some form of variable refresh rate technology, and oftentimes an edgy industrial design. Those criteria do ignore some of the critical qualities that define a display, and as a result things like color saturation and contrast are all too often sub-par on gaming monitors—or at least on models that don't cost four figures. Fortunately, we have the fine folks at MSI to rescue us from this washed-out monitor wasteland with the Optix MAG24C. ...Read more...

The last year has not been Intel's best from a PC security perspective. Positive Technologies recently announced that PCs built with Intel processors going back to 2015's Skylake chips could be exploited through the computers' USB ports thanks to vulnerabilities in the CPUs' Minix-based Management Engine (ME) subsystem. The blue silicon giant has now acknowledged the problems and announced the availability of patches for motherboard and system makers to integrate into future BIOS updates.Intel's statement indicates that "an attacker could gain unauthorized access to platform, [the] Intel ME feature, and third-party secrets protected by the Intel Management Engine, Intel Server Platform Service (SPS), or Intel Trusted Execution Engine (TXE)." That access could ...Read more...

Who's a good boy?