Techreport

The cool kids are all upgrading to Intel's latest Core i7-8700K and supporting Z370 motherboards. Gerbils upgrading from Broadwell-E, Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs can all technically carry over their DDR4 memory modules, but G.Skill's latest kits for the Z370 platform offer some tempting upgrade choices. The headlining set has two-DIMM DDR4 kits at a blistering 4600 MT/s. For those looking to occupy all four DIMM slots with 32 GB of memory, G.Skill has 4000 MT/s sets with RGB LED lighting and 4200 MT/s kits without. All three kits are built with Samsung B-die integrated circuit components. ...Read more...

Retro is in when it comes to gaming, and Lenovo is betting that at least a few people look back at their old ThinkPad work laptops with the same kind of rose-tinted glasses. The company is celebrating the 25th birthday of the instantly-recognizable laptop family with the ThinkPad Anniversary Edition 25 laptop. This portable blends modern performance and features with some nostalgic design touches like a backlit ThinkPad Classic keyboard, dedicated volume buttons, a TrackPoint "mouse," and the multicolor ThinkPad logo. ...Read more...

Our review of the Core i7-8700K just went live. If you're as impressed by that chip's performance, you'll need a new Z370 motherboard to go with it. While we conducted our testing with a fine board from Gigabyte, MSI has a whopping 13 Z370 boards of its own to choose from, and nine of them are on e-tail shelves today. Of that number, we'll soon be putting the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC through its paces. ...Read more...

The new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones, the Pixelbook high-end Chromebook, and the two new Google Home speakers were the headliners at Google's hardware event today. However, the company also released Clips, its spin on an AI-powered hands-free camera, a new set of language-translating in-ear headphones called Pixel Buds, and a new Daydream View head mount for press-ganging a smartphone into VR duty. ...Read more...

Today's Google event is now over, and there's a ton of hardware to be looked at. Besides the Pixelbook and the Home Mini and Max speakers, we're now going to discuss what was probably the most-anticipated bit of kit from the show, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones. ...Read more...

Last August, Google killed off the Chromebook Pixel. This move left the curious space of "high-end Chromebook" conspicuously empty. If you're in the market for just such a product now, don't worry, because Google's just announced the Pixelbook: a 12.3" fold-over convertible Chromebook packing Intel Kaby Lake CPUs, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of solid-state storage. ...Read more...

Google kicked off its hardware event today with a couple of new additions to its line of connected speaker products for the home. The Google Home Mini and the Google Home Max are fun-size and king-size takes on last year's $129 Google Home speaker, respectively. The Mini appears to be ready to do battle with Amazon's Echo Dot, while the Max looks to do battle with Apple's premium HomePod smart speaker. ...Read more...

Intel's eighth-generation Core desktop processors have been all the rage over the last couple weeks, but laptop makers have new wares containing not-quite-as-novel eight-generation mobile CPUs. HP is the company making announcements today, and the portables du jour are the primo Spectre x360 convertible and the Spectre 13 laptop. Both machines are available with 4K displays and Intel Core i7-8550U four-core, eight-thread processors that boost up to a ludicrous-for-a-laptop 4.0 GHz. ...Read more...

Intel's eighth-generation Core desktop processors have been all the rage over the last couple weeks, but laptop makers have new wares containing not-quite-as-novel eight-generation mobile CPUs. HP is the company making announcements today, and the portables du jour are the primo Spectre x360 convertible and the Spectre 13 laptop. Both machines are available with 4K displays and Intel Core i7-8550U four-core, eight-thread processors that boost up to a ludicrous-for-a-laptop 4.0 GHz. ...Read more...

Over the last few years, one of the most confusing parts of Intel's product stack has been the series of low-end parts. The company has produced Celeron and Pentium processors using both its large-and-fast desktop cores and its lightweight low-power cores. That led to multiple CPUs equally labeled "Pentium" but with wildly disparate performance. Today, a longtime tipster and friend of the site pointed us to a Product Change Notification buried in Intel's website that indicates that Kaby Lake-based desktop Pentium G4560, G4600, and G4620 chips will be rebranded as "Pentium Gold" CPUs. ...Read more...

It's not exactly an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but sometimes I just can't resist putting things in a nice, logical pattern. This summer, I spent time with a notebook equipped with Nvidia's GTX 1070, and also with a machine with a GTX 1060 inside. Following that pattern, my next review has to involve the GTX 1050 Ti. To help me maintain my sense of order, the fine folks over at MSI sent over a GP62X Leopard Pro-1045. This gaming notebook features Nvidia's value-oriented GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, and might just hit the sweet spot in the gaming notebook market. ...Read more...

Despite the term "virtual reality" losing some of its buzz lately, the related field of mixed reality (MR) seems to be picking up steam. Apple's latest phones and iOS release have been built with MR in mind, and Microsoft is making a big push for the technology in its upcoming Windows Creators Fall Update coming later this month. Samsung has thus far been content to poke at VR with its smartphone-centered Gear VR platform, but the Korean manufacturer is set to join the PC MR party with the HMD Odyssey, which is the highest-spec Windows headset we have seen thus far. ...Read more...

These guys totally fit the bill.

Black Friday is less than two months away, so this is the time of year when makers of gadgets and gizmos announce their latest products. Today is Roku's turn, and the company has a lineup of five streaming media players that will work with just about any content provider except iTunes. The new round of players includes what we believe is the first streaming stick with the ability to play back 4K content. All five models have quad-core processors, though Roku doesn't disclose the make, model, or clock speed of any of the SoCs, or how much memory the devices pack. ...Read more...

There's a lot of call for graphics processing nowadays in almost every industry. To serve the market of single-purpose machines, AMD just announced the Radeon Embedded E9170 series of graphics adapters. The series includes Polaris-12 based parts on PCIe cards, MXM modules, and even a multi-chip module. ...Read more...

Sometimes, when I sit down at my workstation with a fresh cup of coffee and a Twinkie, I peer out the window at the rain and think: "I should go shopping." Fortunately, in 2017 that means braving aggressive advertisements and slimy scams rather than stepping into the storm. This morning, the superior shopping opportunities are on Ryzen CPUs and a few compatible motherboards. We've also got a killer offer on an external hard drive. ...Read more...

As happens with seemingly every aspect of personal computers and gaming, there's a developing trend in gaming headsets towards modularity and customizability. While integrated solutions like HyperX's Cloud series headsets are good for most folks, some gamers want to piece together a headset from individual headphones and add-on microphones like AntLion's ModMic 5. Corsair is moving in on this angle with its ST100 RGB Premium headset stand, which combines an external sound card with 7.1 sound virtualization, a two-port USB 3.0 hub, and RGB LED illumination into one stylish aluminum package. ...Read more...

Elitegroup Computer Systems doesn't get the attention that its larger peers do, but ever since the release of the legendary K7S5A motherboard, I've had a soft spot for the company. That's right—ECS is still making motherboards, and the company's just revealed its latest offering: the Leet Gaming Z370-Lightsaber. Predictably, this ATX motherboard uses Intel's latest Z370 chipset and takes eighth-generation Intel Core CPUs.

When a product aims to become the new standard in its class, it has to be functional while remaining accessible. That's exactly the target that Cougar Gaming is aiming for with its new Puri keyboards. The boards come in full-size and tenkeyless (TKL) versions, and unlike a number of affordable mechanical keyboards, they have genuine Cherry MX switches onboard.

We've already written about a couple of MSI's motherboards built around Intel's Z370 chipset for the eighth-generation Core CPUs scheduled for release on Thursday. The chipset itself doesn't pack a whole lot of excitement, but the processors represent the first time the silicon magicians in blue have increased core counts in mainstream desktop chips since the Core 2 Quad was released back in 2006. The dragon-branded motherboard maker is firing from both barrels with a whopping 13 boards based on the Z370 chipset. ...Read more...

Combining NVMe drives for enhanced throughput or redundancy on high-end desktop platforms has been a contentious issue. Intel promised NVMe RAID capability on its X299 platform, but the company restricts the option to boot from an array unless it's made of its own SSDs. On top of this, the blue silicon giant will likely charge users a premium for an "NVMe key" and has yet to release the drivers and firmware needed to make it happen. AMD's Threadripper platform has lacked NVMe RAID entirely, until now. The silicon underdogs from Santa Clara announced this morning that NVMe RAID modes 0, 1, and 10 are coming to the X399 platform as a complimentary upgrade through a BIOS update. There will be no restrictions on the brands or models of the six drives that can go into an NMVe array. ...Read more...

It's almost impossible to condone a CPU purchase this week given what's brewing for October 5, but Newegg is making it mighty hard to restrain ourselves. AMD's Ryzen 7 1700X is on sale at the 'egg today for $309.99. That's $90 off its list price, or just $10 more than the Ryzen 7 1700 right now. In the six-core, 12-thread department, the Ryzen 5 1600X is going for $199.99 at Newegg, or $15 less than its non-X counterpart.

As any PC enthusiast knows, it's been infuriatingly difficult to purchase a midrange graphics card over the past few months. The insane demand for cryptocurrency mining power has swept up every GeForce GTX 1060, Radeon RX 570, and Radeon RX 580 that Nvidia and AMD can turn out, and the black hole of demand has even warped GeForce GTX 1070 prices. Time after time this year, we've crossed our fingers hoping that one event or another in the cryptocurrency world would be the one to make midrange graphics card prices sane again, but those hopes have been repeatedly dashed.Recent regulatory changes in China have shut down cryptocurrency exchanges in the country , though, and that move appears to have been the needle sharp enough to finally hole the Bitcoin and Ethereum balloons. ( Ed. postscript: turns out a difficulty bomb for Ethereum isn't helping, either.) ...Read more...

After the Core i9-7900X released back in June, we figured that high-core-count CPUs in Intel's Core X lineup would need a lot of power when overclocked. German extreme overclocker der8auer recently observed CPU power consumption over 1000 W when overclocking Intel's Core i9-7980XE beyond 6 GHz using a pot full of steaming liquid nitrogen. This sort of craziness probably inspired ASRock to fortify its already-robust X299 Taichi motherboard with two eight-pin EPS power connectors and an improved voltage delivery circuit. The result is the X299 Taichi XE. ...Read more...

Retro video gaming is en vogue these days. Nintendo's NES Classic was the hot item last Christmas, and many prospective buyers weren't able to track one down before the company halted production. Nintendo is releasing its SNES Classic today to just as much fanfare. The Commodore 64 was released in 1982, a couple of years before the NES debuted in its Japanese Famicom clothes. Now, Deep Silver parent company Koch Media has announced plans to sell a mini version of the classic 8-bit home computer complete with its built-in keyboard, an 80s-style joystick, and a 21st-century HDMI output. ...Read more...

GamersNexus isn't our usual source of leaks, but nevertheless the folks there published a few slides that they claim are from an internal Intel document. The images appear to detail the company's upcoming releases. Most of the info in the slides isn't new, but there are a few interesting bits of data regarding Apollo Lake's successor, the remainder of the 300-series chipsets, and a possible upcoming Optane SSD. As always, grab the Morton.Coffee Lake is launching on October 5 , but so far the only new chipset we've heard about is the overclocking-enabled Z370. According to GamersNexus' slides, we won't be seeing other variants until next year. The first slide lists H370, H310, B360, Q370, and Q360 chipsets ...Read more...

Despite the fact that USB 3.1 Gen2 is still not ubiquitous in the field and in brand-new products, the USB Implementers Forum is marching forward with the next version of the USB specification. USB 3.2 will double the maximum transfer rates of USB 3.1 Gen 2 by using a two-lane approach with existing USB Type-C cables. The specification was first announced back in July, and now the complete 103 MB file with the official specification has been published and is available for download for those with very long attention spans. ...Read more...

If you're considering some lakeside property on the java lagoon, you'll need a new motherboard to go with your fancy new six-core CPU. We've been carefully covering each vendor's Z370 boards over the last few days, and today we've got Asus' models up for discussion. The company is holding up no less than eleven cards in its deck of Z370 mobos. With models ranging from the LN2-friendly ROG Maximus X Apex through the ultra-durable TUF Z370-Pro and on down to the entry-level Prime Z370-P, Asus can probably serve your Z370 motherboard needs.

Most of the talk in the SSD world revolves around names like Crucial and Samsung. Team Group wants to distinguish its offerings from those of the major players, and it's thinking that heat dissipation is the name of the game. Not that long after showing off its Cardea M.2 SSDs with massive heatsinks, the company's now pulling back the curtain on the Cardea Zero M.2 drives, available in 240 GB and 480 GB sizes. ...Read more...

Mechanical keyboards are great, but even the quietest Red-switched varieties aren't to everyone's tastes. Whether r/mechanicalkeyboards wants to believe it or not, a substantial market still exists for membrane keyboards, even for gaming. SteelSeries knows the sales figures and has announced the Apex 150, a board built using the company's proprietary Quick Tension membrane switch design, coupled with five-zone RGB LED backlighting. ...Read more...

Some people seem to just hate RGB LED lighting, and certainly there are also rabid fans of the technology. I think that most people fall into a middle category of "I like it as long as it's tasteful"—as is the case with so many topics. Cooler Master's new Cosmos C700P is a full-tower E-ATX case with RGB LED accents and solid aluminum handles on both top and bottom. The two features, along with its pair of curved glass side panels, lend the case a distinctive look. ...Read more...

Wait, didn't we just do this one?

The launch of Z370 motherboards is one of the trends in hardware this week, and ASRock is jumping in with its gang of ten boards supporting Intel's upcoming eighth-generation Core processors. The group includes a pair of Mini-ITX boards, one microATX model, and seven different full-fat ATX flavors. ...Read more...

Fair day to you, dear gerbils and gerbilettes. It's been a busy week here at TR HQ. Intel's high-end Core i9 CPUs are out and likely triggering GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) on a number of you. It's the season for new builds and hardware purchases, after all. Here are the deals we found for you today. ...Read more...

MSI's Mac Pro-like Vortex G65 computer was a powerful machine indeed, but it also came with a large price tag that may have dampened the enthusiasm of prospective buyers. The company is trying a different tack now with the Vortex PC G25 desktop. MSI is employing Intel's latest eighth-generation Core i7 CPUs along with either a GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB or a GTX 1070 graphics card in what it calls a "console-sized" gaming PC. ...Read more...

Dang, it sure feels like it was just short while ago that AMD released a pack of Radeon drivers—oh wait, it was. The red team's software developers can't take a break, though. AMD just let loose the Radeon 17.9.3 drivers with support for Total War: Warhammer II and Forza Motorsport 7.

If you've wanted to get in on the voice-activated home-assistant action but balked at the high price of devices like Apple's HomePod or Amazon's Echo, you're in luck. Amazon just announced a brand-new, lower-cost Echo. The new device can wear up to six different casings to synchronize with your decor. Along with the cheaper and prettier Echo, Amazon has a a souped-up Echo Plus on the way, which can function as a smart home hub. Finally, the compact Echo Spot takes a novel approach by adding a screen.

Here at TR we don't generally have much call for embedded system. We do know that some of you gerbils out there need ruggedly reliable mini-PCs that can run for ages. Shuttle is one provider of petite PCs, and the company's newest model is the XPC DH270. This 1.3-liter barebones has an LGA 1151 socket ready for any Skylake or Kaby Lake CPU with TDP up to 65 W. The machine packs in dual Intel-powered Gigabit Ethernet connectors, an HDMI 2.0 port for displays up to 4K resolution, and a pair of old-school serial ports. ...Read more...

Intel's Z370 chipset may not bring a lot of new features when compared to the Z270 that blew into town along with the Kaby Lake desktop CPUs earlier this year, but builders will need boards with the new chipset to use the blue silicon giant's Coffee Lake processors. MSI has announced a pair of Z370-based boards, the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC and the Z370 Godlike Gaming. Both boards are sprinkled with a generous supply of RGB LEDs controlled through MSI's Mystic Light utility. ...Read more...

Over the years, Nvidia has put its engineers to work on modifying and optimizing the graphics technology in quite a number of PC games. The latest game to go through the green team's training regimen is Middle-earth: Shadow of War. To make sure that GeForce gamers enjoy the fruits of its labors, Nvidia just announced the "Forge Your Army" bundle. Until October 16, anyone who buys a GeForce GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti graphics card (or a system or laptop containing one) is eligible for a free copy of Shadow of War. ...Read more...

Some of today's thin gaming laptops are able to cram most of a high-end gaming PC inside them, but companies like Gigabyte are still hard at work trying to improve on the concept of external graphics docks. To wit, Gigabyte is now stuffing all the power of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 into the Aorus GTX 1080 Gaming Box. ...Read more...

Maybe you're burnt out on all the rumors and leaks about Intel's eighth-gen CPUs. Here's something a little different, then. Spanish site Informatica Cero claims to have gotten hold of a leaked AMD roadmap displaying the company's plans for the next couple years regarding APUs and desktop CPUs. Please help yourselves to the rock salt in that jug over there and read on.

Corsair's Vengeance RGB DDR4 high-performance memory has been out in the wild since March, but now the company has let loose its White Edition modules with white heat spreaders in place of the somewhat dour black units. The white modules are available in speeds from 3000 MT/s up to 3600 MT/s. The available kits are made up of 8 GB or 16 GB modules with total capacities from 16 GB all the way up to 128 GB (8 x 16 GB). ...Read more...

Corsair's Vengeance RGB DDR4 high-performance memory has been out in the wild since March, but now the company has let loose its White Edition modules with white heat spreaders in place of the somewhat dour black units. The white modules are available in speeds from 3000 MT/s up to 3600 MT/s. The available kits are made up of 8 GB or 16 GB modules with total capacities from 16 GB all the way up to 128 GB (8 x 16 GB). ...Read more...

Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X Roundup

We like to "ooh and ah" about the fastest PCIe storage devices around here, but when it comes to capacity, spinning platters probably aren't going away any time soon. Toshiba has announced its latest MG06 7200 RPM hard drives for large business applications. The largest of the MG06 drives is a 10 TB unit that offers a 25% increase in maximum capacity compared to the last generation's largest model. The company says the latest drives also have a faster maximum sequential speed of 237 MB/s and a 25% longer mean time to failure of 2.5 million hours (over 285 years). What hasn't changed is the SATA 6 Gbps interface. ...Read more...

Other than Nintendo's Nvidia-powered Switch, all current-generation video game consoles are built around AMD's CPU and graphics chip designs. In an exclusive interview granted to VentureBeat, the current owner of the Atari name announced that its Ataribox console is joining ranks with the majority by tapping an "AMD custom processor" for its pixel-pushing power. ...Read more...

As a big fan of Corsair's now-discontinued Vengeance M95 mouse, I picked up a Steelseries Rival 500 recently based on the review our boy Nathan wrote comparing the two. I've been quite pleased with it. There's no denying that the Rival 500 is a fairly pricey mouse, though, and all those buttons just aren't necessary for someone who only plays games like Counter-Strike. If that's where you're at, check out SteelSeries' latest product: the Rival 110. ...Read more...

As a big fan of Corsair's now-discontinued Vengeance M95 mouse, I picked up a Steelseries Rival 500 recently based on the review our boy Nathan wrote comparing the two. I've been quite pleased with it. There's no denying that the Rival 500 is a fairly pricey mouse, though, and all those buttons just aren't necessary for someone who only plays games like Counter-Strike. If that's where you're at, check out SteelSeries' latest product: the Rival 110. ...Read more...

At its Ignite event today, Microsoft placed a lot of emphasis on "firstline" employees, a term it uses to describe the workers that come in direct contact with customers. The company has these people in mind and has designed special packages including a laptop, Windows 10 S and Office 365 F1. HP, Acer, and Lenovo have low-cost machines on the way crafted with the specific purpose of supplying firstline employees, and they'll start at just $275. ...Read more...