Techreport

If you've looked at—or even fantasized about—picking up a desktop-replacement-style laptop lately, chances are your eyes have passed over the sleek hull of the Razer Blade Pro. Then, you saw the $4,000-plus price tag. Razer's newest laptop is looking to inspire the same desire without the associated sticker shock. The Razer Blade Pro Full HD looks like its big brother, but packs more reasonable internals and hurts a lot less at checkout. ...Read more...

Creative work is all about flow, whether it's art, music, or writing. Interruptions and stutters are kept to a minimum to keep that movement going. Logitech is hoping to help content creators with its new Craft Advanced Keyboard. ...Read more...

It's deal time again at The Tech Report, and we have some good stuff in store(s) for you this fine Thursday afternoon. Today's bounty includes an AM4 motherboard, a set of Bluetooth-compatible studio monitor speakers, and a pair of hard drives. ...Read more...

We wrote about AMD's Pro versions of the its Ryzen desktop processors just over a month ago. The business-focused versions of Ryzen have now arrived, and AMD is shouting from the rooftops about design wins with some high-profile manufacturing partners. The Ryzen Pro chips share the Zen architecture with the everyday Ryzen chips mainstream desktop users have come to know and love over the past few months, but add in security and management features like AMD's GuardMI and SenseMI technologies. ...Read more...

Somebody set us up diatom.

The first wisps of fall are starting to make themselves felt in the Midwest, and that means it's time once more for an iPhone event—or, at least, what seems to be an iPhone event. Apple is sending out invites to the tech press with the tag line "let's meet at our place," that being the Steve Jobs Theater at its Apple Park campus. We'll learn for sure what Apple is announcing on September 12 at 10 AM PT.Just got the invite. It’s official. pic.twitter.com/L9v0vbiUll ...Read more...

This week's IFA 2017 show in Berlin has seen several mobile PC refreshes as well as new displays and PC peripherals. LG is getting the attention today with the unveiling of its V30 plus-sized flagship smartphone. The phone drops the rather gimmicky second screen from its V20 forebear and gains a nearly bezel-free 6.0" OLED screen with a resolution of 2880x1440 that works out to a pixel density of about 535 PPI. LG refers to the aspect ratio as 18:9 (or 2:1 according to my math classes), slightly taller than the 16:9 ratio found in most other phones—or wider, depending on the perspective. ...Read more...

Reuters reports that Apple has joined a consortium of investors bidding to purchase Toshiba's NAND flash chip manufacturing business before the Japanese company's self-imposed sale deadline today. Toshiba's immense troubles in its Westinghouse nuclear power business have apparently cost it a fair chunk of change. In an effort to stay afloat, the company is selling off its profitable NAND manufacturing arm, which is the world's second largest manufacturer of flash chips. Apple is reportedly joining a bidding group that's led by Bain Capital and includes SK Hynix and a collection of Japanese banks. ...Read more...

It baffles me, but I frequently hear praise for laptop keyboards from irregular typists. It seems the short throw, narrow spacing, and low profile of laptop keys are a hit with a certain sort of user. If your tastes swing that way, have a look at Sharkoon's new PureWriter TKL. This tenkeyless keyboard has low-profile keycaps just over 6 mm in height and uses short-throw keyswitches from Kailh that actuate after only 1.5 mm of travel. ...Read more...

Back in 2011, AMD launched the Llano series of APUs. These chips combined CPU cores derived from the Phenom II line with an IGP based on the Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs. At the time, AMD was excited about the first steps towards its Fusion concept and talked up Llano perhaps a little too much, as the chips ended up a year and a half late and had underwhelming performance. In 2014, a group of disgruntled AMD shareholders filed a class-action suit against the company claiming that AMD overpromised and underdelivered with its first-generation APU hardware. Now, AMD has made an offer to settle that suit to the tune of $29.5 million. ...Read more...

AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and Ryzen Threadripper 1920X have been hogging the high-end desktop spotlight of late, but this morning, the Threadripper 1900X takes the stage. This entry-level ticket to the X399 platform pairs eight Zen cores with quad-channel memory and 64 PCIe lanes for expansion cards or storage for $549, and it's available today from Newegg, at Amazon, and from other online retailers.CoresThreadsBase

Our previous coverage of Acer's new peripherals and Predator Orion 9000 desktop could make you think the company decided to become a boutique gaming hardware manufacturer. Fear not, as Acer also released a batch of mobile devices at IFA 2017 that aimed at mainstream audiences. The manufacturer showed off a slim laptop, a couple of 2-in-1 Windows laptops, and a 15" Chromebook. ...Read more...

Acer brought quite the showpiece to IFA 2017. Perhaps not content with regular desktop computers, the company decided it needed to take matters into its own hands. Meet the Predator Orion 9000, the machine that Acer calls the most powerful PC it's ever made. ...Read more...

Dell is refreshing its Inspiron 15 7000 gaming laptop with an updated look and some minor connectivity tweaks. Most importantly, though, the company is sweetening the machine with a GTX 1060 graphics chip at the top end of its option sheet, courtesy of Nvidia's Max-Q technology. ...Read more...

Lag and excess cabling are both undesirable, but in my experience, you have to pick your poison when it comes to input devices like mice and keyboards. Logitech says its G603 Lightspeed wireless gaming mouse and G613 wireless mechanical keyboard will deliver gamers an experience free of cable clutter and the delayed response typical of wireless peripherals. The company is also literally rolling out its G840 extra large gaming mousepad. ...Read more...

Acer had all kinds of goodies on display at IFA 2017 this week. For now, we're going to focus on the company's high-end peripherals to help see, hear, and control the game. ...Read more...

The IFA trade show is proving an especially exciting time for gamers this year. Asus is stepping up to the plate in Berlin with a hot new gaming laptop, the ROG Chimera G703, and a fresh FreeSync display, the ROG Strix XG35VQ. ...Read more...

Alienware has been making quite a name for itself lately. Dell's gaming sub-brand has a penchant for designing hardware with modern, aggressive styling that's usually devoid of the overused black-and-red motif. The company's design chops are coupled with high-end hardware, as evidenced by the new Alienware AW3418DW and AW3418HW displays. ...Read more...

We usually think of smaller things being quieter (well, maybe not if you have kids), but smaller fans turn into buzzing monsters when they try to do the work of their bigger siblings. That can make building a small-form-factor PC to connect to the living room or bedroom television a tough project. Be Quiet's new SFX L power supplies look to ensure that building a compact PC doesn't mean you're building a giant mosquito in the process. ...Read more...

Prodigious power in a pint-sized package is something we appreciate around here, and Shuttle's X1 line looks quite interesting. Three models are on offer, and all pair an Intel seventh-generation four-core mobile processor with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB graphics card and SSD storage. All the variants come packed into the same 5.6" x 5.6" x 3.4" tall (14 cm x 14 cm x 8.6 cm) multi-faceted chassis that displaces just 1.75 L. ...Read more...

A lot of people use computers for leisurely pursuits like gaming or watching videos. A portion of users get professional work done on their machines. A smaller subset still relies on every bit of CPU, GPU, and I/O horsepower available to get things done faster. Gigabyte's metal-encrusted MW51-HP0 is designed for folks in this last group. This board has an LGA 2066 socket and a C422 chipset ready to power one of Intel's Xeon W processors, eight DIMM slots for registered ECC DDR4 memory across four channels, generous storage connectivity, and support for up to four graphics cards. ...Read more...

Why'd you leave the plate upon the table?

Time was, you only saw good deals on the weekends. Companies would hit you with the low prices when you had your fresh paycheck burning a hole in your pocket. Folks these days get paid whenever, though, and maybe that's why there are always deals to be found if you have a look. We've done just that, and come up with some pretty potent prices on precious purchaseables. ...Read more...

Intel's Skylake-X CPUs put some of the best elements of the company's Xeon CPUs on the enthusiast desktop, but those chips miss out on a couple of features that many would consider mandatory for workstation-class builds. The lack of ECC RAM support from the X299 platform is the most pressing omission, but businesses might also want support for Intel's vPro suite of remote management tools. Some others might also want AVX-512 support with dual AVX-512 FMA units in lower-core-count chips, a feature that's hobbled on lower-end Skylake-X CPUs and missing entirely from Kaby Lake-X chips. Yet another class of user might want more PCIe 3.0 connectivity from the CPU than lower-end Skylake-X CPUs provide.Base

When Asus designs a product with gamers in mind, it usually slaps a Republic of Gamers logo and branding on it. Now, though, the company is looking to bring a bit of gaming flair to its standard product lineup with the Asus RT-AC86U router. ...Read more...

If you looked carefully at the four headsets shown in the Windows Mixed Reality piece this morning, you might have noticed a tiny Dell logo on one of them. Along with XPS and Inspiron laptops with eighth-generation CPUs, Dell has announced the Visor VR118 headset at IFA 2017. This headset is Dell's first entry into the burgeoning head-mounted display market. ...Read more...

After the release of the Note 8 handset, Samsung is turning its attention to PC hardware. At IFA 2017, the Korean conglomerate presented a trio of business-oriented displays: the 34" C34H89, the 27" C27H80, and the SH85, available as the 27" S27H85 or the 24" S24H85.

Dell hit the show floor at IFA in Berlin with a flurry of portable machines packing Intel's just-announced eighth-generation Core processors. The PC maker has freshened laptops and convertibles in sizes ranging from a tidy 13" all the way up to what it says is the world's largest convertible laptop at 17". Let's take a look at the new gear. ...Read more...

Back during Computex, we were impressed by the ZenBook Flip S convertible in our Asus booth tour. Now, the company's letting the machine loose upon the world with the model name UX370UA. The Zenbook Flip S uses a solid-feeling 360° hinge, letting it rotate into tent and tablet modes. The 13.3" display offers a good compromise between tablet-mode portability and laptop-mode usability, and comes in either 1920x1080 IPS or 4K IPS varieties. ...Read more...

AMD's Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics card, the lowest-priced and most attractive member of the Radeon RX Vega triumvirate, goes on sale today. The extremely limited retail availability of the air- and liquid-cooled versions of the Radeon RX Vega 64 led us to expect that the GeForce GTX 1070-targeting RX Vega 56 could be even harder to find for sale. So far, our findings bear that notion out. ...Read more...

Microsoft has been pushing the idea of mixed reality since it first demoed its Hololens headset back in 2015. The company made some noise last year when it promised that its hardware partners would deliver headsets for under $400 in time for this year's holiday season. The new headsets use an "inside-out" tracking system that does away with the external tracking boxes used by HTC's Vive and Oculus' Rift. The Redmond software giant says that the new devices are still on track for a holiday release, will work with PCs that cost as little as $500, and perhaps most notably, that content from Steam will be available for the new platform. The company also mentioned that 343 Industries will create a new title in Halo universe for the new mixed reality devices. ...Read more...

A little while ago, the Linux-headed sleuths over at Phoronix came across an obscure bug in Ryzen CPUs that triggered segmentation faults ("segfaults," which cause application crashes) in a compiler-specific workload. The bug was confirmed by AMD's engineers, who described it as a "performance marginality problem" and indicated that owners of affected CPUs could reach out to AMD Customer Care. The engineers also noted that Ryzen Threadripper and Epyc processors are unaffected. Phoronix's Michael Larabel took AMD up on its replacement offer and recently received a revised CPU that's apparently clear of the bug. ...Read more...

Input devices are perhaps the most subjective of all PC components. Individuals seek out mice in shapes and configurations based on physiology and desires, and an entire subculture exists for folks that need to customize every conceivable aspect of their typing experience. I personally love the click-clack that pours out of my keyboard's Blue switches, but some people can't stand even the substantially subdued racket that comes from a Red-equipped board. Corsair is out to help these folks and their cubicle-mates by expanding its line of K70 Lux RGB keyboards to include a Cherry MX Silent option. ...Read more...

I am not generally a fan of gaming laptops, but even I have to admit that thanks to ever-more-efficient graphics chips, the notion of a "gaming laptop" is a lot less oxymoronic than it once was. When folks ask me for a gaming laptop recommendation I often go straight for MSI, and machines like those in the company's new GE73 Raider and GE63 Raider series are why. These laptops boast beautiful displays, powerful speakers, and fast hardware wrapped in sleek aluminum casings. ...Read more...

Gamers looking for a competitive edge will drop serious coin to reduce lag in their displays, get more frames-per-second from their video cards, and obtain more accurate response from their mouse and keyboard. Linksys says the Killer Prioritization Engine in its WRT32X AC3200 router is "built exclusively for gaming." The WRT32X's styling is somewhat restrained for a gaming router, looking like a cross between Linksys' old-school WRT54G hardware and Netgear's spider-spacecraft Nighthawk series. ...Read more...

Ever since a sizing misstep with the original Xbox "Duke" controller, Microsoft has done a pretty bang-up job in the controller hardware department. The Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers are ubiquitous in PC gaming, though some folks probably think they could perhaps use more RGB LEDs. Gamers don't have to suffer in darkness anymore, since Razer's Wolverine Ultimate gamepad packs RGB LED lighting and brings Razer's Synapse software from Windows onto the Xbox. ...Read more...

Literally short bread, but technically quick bread.

If you are one of the millions of players aspiring to a chicken dinner in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and you have a GeForce graphics card, you should probably go ahead and grab the latest driver version, numbered 385.41. The new release is WHQL-certified and labeled Game Ready for PUBG, as well as the Destiny 2 open beta, ARK: Survival Evolved, F1 2017, Pro Evo Soccer 2018, and the early access beta of Quake Champions....Read more...

Welcome back for another mid-week mini-deals post, gerbils. We've procured solid prices on a few precious products, and we present them for your perusal. A 4K LG monitor, a fancy Fractal Design case, and Samsung's 960 EVO M.2 SSD are all up for grabs in today's docket of deals. ...Read more...

Maybe you've bought one of AMD's enormous Threadripper chips or an Intel Core X processor. If that's the case, you also got the accompanying jumbo-sized E-ATX motherboard, and you've might be down in the dumps trying to find a PC chassis with the right combination of flash and class. The combination of subdued styling and mammoth dimensions of Lian Li's PC-V3000 enclosure might be just what you've been looking for. ...Read more...

Antec is one of the oldest PC enclosure manufacturers still around, but the 31-year-old company still has some new tricks. Exhibit A is the Performance One P8 chassis, an all-black steel-and-ABS-plastic case with mounts for three radiators, a full-length power supply shroud, and 2017's favorite feature, a tempered glass side panel. ...Read more...

Gaming headsets seem to be following the Galapagos finch pattern of radiating out from a single species into an entire genus filling every conceivable niche. HyperX is expanding its lineup of headsets with the Cloud Alpha, a piece of kit that looks improve the existing Cloud with a lightweight design, more features, and a dash more of style. We've generally liked the other Cloud headsets we've examined, so hopefully HyperX can continue the trend with the Cloud Alpha. ...Read more...

Over at the Imagination Technologies blog, there's a fresh article written by none other than Simon Fenney. It's the 25th anniversary of the creation of PowerVR, and Simon was one of the original creators of the technology. His blog post recounts some of his fond memories of the early days of the unique graphics tech.

Samsung is ready to follow up its disastrous Galaxy Note 7 jumbo smartphone with what it ultimately chose to simply call the Galaxy Note 8, after some speculation about a badge change. The new phone's "infinity" display measures 6.3" across, or a tenth of an inch larger than the one in the Galaxy S8 Plus. The biggest difference versus that handset is the inclusion of the S Pen stylus. ...Read more...

The leak-catchers over at VideoCardz spotted a handful of eighth-generation Intel Core desktop CPUs on the website of Canadian e-tailer PCCanada. The listings have since been removed, but they contained product codes and pricing. We wrote earlier this week about how the box art for the new CPUs seemingly confirmed rumors that core counts would be increasing to six in at least some models in the Core i5 and Core i7 families. That gives us some perspective for these purported prices. Grab the salt shaker and take a look.The overclockable eighth-generation Core i3-8350K should be actually cheaper than its its seventh-generation equivalent. For impatient gerbils, the $241.82 CAD price tag on that model is equivalent to $185.53 in U.S. Dollars. The $338.00 Canadian ...Read more...

We liked the sound quality of Corsair's Void Surround gaming headset when we reviewed it back in March. The company has revamped its lineup of Void Pro headsets with three new models. The members of the trio all sport a similarly eye-catching headband design, this time realized in aluminum. All models have earcups lined with breathable micromesh fabric and sport 50-mm neodymium drivers and 7.1 surround sound virtualization. ...Read more...

Dell will sell you an Alienware Area 51 packing an AMD Threadripper CPU, but Intel fans looking to buy that machine with a many-core CPU were left in the lurch. Until now, anyway. The company just announced the Alienware Area 51 with Intel X-Series CPUs. Buyers can choose CPU options among the six-core Core i7-7800X, eight-core Core i7-7820X, or ten-core Core i9-7900X. ...Read more...