Techreport

After a long-running investigation, the European Comission is slapping Google with its biggest antitrust-related fine to date. The EC's allegations pertain to years of anti-competitive practices regarding Google search results pointing to the company's own Shopping service to the detriment of competitors' services. Far outstripping the previous record, Google has to pay €2.42 bn ($2.74 billion) to the EU for pointing shoppers at its own shopping platform.On top of the huge fine, the EC demands that Google change its search algorithm so that competing services are fairly displayed. If the company fails to comply within 90 ...Read more...

If you've been eyeing a Thermaltake chassis and wishing it had a tempered glass window, you might be in luck. The Core V71, Core V51, and Suppressor F51 cases are all getting "TG edition" releases that—you guessed it—come with a tempered glass side panel. Thermaltake calls the Core V71 a "full tower" while the Core V51 and Suppressor F51 are "mid-towers," but all three cases support full-sized ATX motherboards and power supplies.

PC hardware and computing

Gamers looking to pack eight cores and 16 threads into a Mini-ITX chassis will soon have another option thanks to Gigabyte's GA-AB350N-Gaming WIFI AM4 motherboard. The mighty mite supports AMD's Ryzen CPUs and seventh-generation APUs, and should equally work with the upcoming Raven Ridge APUs packing IGPs based on the company's Zen architecture. The board has a pair of DIMM slots for memory and a single steel-reinforced PCIe x16 slot. This offering joins Biostar's X370GTN as the only Ryzen Mini-ITX mobos we're aware of so far. ...Read more...

Gerbils in the market for a midrange graphics card lately are acutely aware of the impact of cryptocurrency miners on the supply of cards based on AMD and Nvidia chips. Biostar isn't going to make the situation any better with its newest motherboard, the TB250-BTC Pro. The BTC Pro sports a whopping twelve PCIe slots that miners can stuff with graphics cards or ASICs in order to increase the number of TFLOPS they can bring to bear in the search for virtual coins. ...Read more...

Intel's got a new SSD out today, gerbils. No, don't get excited, it's not an Optane-powered model. The new drive is the SSD 545s, and it's a mainstream SATA drive that uses a Silicon Motion controller and IMFT's 64-layer 3D TLC flash. Intel says the 545s is the first drive in the world to launch using that flash technology. Moreover, in the U.S., the SSD 545s is launching exclusively at Newegg. ...Read more...

AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card launches today, and we have official answers for most of the questions that have arisen about the Vega GPU's specs and capabilities over the past couple of months. The Frontier Edition family will comprise a pair of cards: an air-cooled model that's launching today for $999, and a liquid-cooled version that's launching in Q3 for $1499. AMD isn't talking about the specs or performance of the liquid-cooled card today, but it's divulging enough for me to conclude that my predictions of the chip's clocks and peak performance in May were correct for the most part. ...Read more...

AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card launches today, and we have official answers for most of the questions that have arisen about the Vega GPU's specs and capabilities over the past couple of months. The Frontier Edition family will comprise a pair of cards: an air-cooled model that's launching today for $999, and a liquid-cooled version that's launching in Q3 for $1499. AMD isn't talking about the specs or performance of the liquid-cooled card today, but it's divulging enough for me to conclude that my predictions of the chip's clocks and peak performance in May were correct for the most part. ...Read more...

In just a couple short months, Intel's X299 high-end desktop platform changed from being the industry's worst-kept secret to a tangible, shipping product. The selection of X299 motherboards has been a little limited, though, and many options are only available for pre-order. That changes today, since Gigabyte's Aorus X299 Gaming series is now available and ready to ship. Even better, the company's put together a goodie-bag for those who choose to ascend to the HEDT stratosphere. ...Read more...

Do you want a graphics card? Well, how do you feel about grossly over-paying for it? If your answer was "no thanks," you're out of luck, because folks hurriedly hashing out cryptocurrency have bought up every reasonably-priced graphics card on the market. Perhaps in a bid to both serve those customers and get graphics cards into the hands of gamers again, Asus and Sapphire have released some graphics cards specifically built for cryptocurrency mining. ...Read more...

Buyers looking for CPUs with more than four cores and eight threads have always had to look beyond Intel's mainstream desktop platforms. The silicon giant first offered quad-core CPUs to consumers all the way back in the beginning of 2007, and the addition of SMT to 2009's Core i7-860 marked the company's last increase in the number of threads in its mainstream chips—until now. Get out your salt shakers, because WCCFTech spotted an entry in the Geekbench database displaying what would appear to be a Coffee Lake CPU packing six cores and 12 hardware threads. ...Read more...

American gerbils with a taste for vanilla Android will soon have a new option on their menus. The aluminum-bodied Nokia 6 smartphone is set to hit the shelves of Amazon's enormous distribution centers early next month. ...Read more...

Most people will tell you that the original Nintendo Entertainment System revitalized the video game industry after it fell apart in 1983. It can be argued, though, that Nintendo didn't really hit its stride until the second iteration of the console. Outside Japan, the successor was called the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES for short), and the N-team has a miniaturized reissue ready to hit stores this September. ...Read more...

It was just over a week ago that we hinted at a significant prize contribution coming to this year's TR BBQ. Today, we can reveal exactly what those prizes are and who to thank for them. The fine folks at Corsair have itemized their mighty haul and confirmed that they will be on location to personally deliver it. Here's the list!I couldn't help myself—I had to run the numbers, and that's around $2,000 worth of gear and apparel. That's an awesome amount, and it's a bit surreal to think that our gathering of gerbils has grown so much since its humble ...Read more...

Microsoft started off this last weekend with an embarassing security snafu. The folks over at The Register reported that 32 TB of non-public data taken from Microsoft's network was uploaded to Beta Archive. This massive haul reportedly included source code for hardware drivers and various Windows builds, leading The Register to raise the concern that the information could be used to identify and exploit security vulnerabilities in Windows.Microsoft itself confirmed that the files contain part of the Shared Source Kit , a restricted-access package containing (among other items) source code for the Windows components that handle Wi-Fi, USB, and the plug-and-play system. While the company doesn't make this kit available to the general public, ...Read more...

CPUs can ship with bugs just as software can, and members of the Debian Linux community have uncovered what they claim is a serious one in Intel Skylake and Kaby Lake processors, including Skylake-X CPUs. In a message on the project's mailing list yesterday that was noticed by the eagle-eyed folks at HotHardware, the project says affected CPUs "could, in some situations, dangerously misbehave when hyper-threading is enabled." The message further recommends that users "disable hyper-threading immediately in BIOS/UEFI to work around the problem."The project member claims the erratum in question is called "Short Loops Which Use AH/BH/CH/DH Registers May Cause Unpredictable System Behavior" ...Read more...

Virtual reality gaming can be great, but the medium has plenty of applications for slightly more passive content like VR video playback. Google's Daydream VR division is trying to reduce the high barrier to entry for VR content creation with the VR180 video format. The company says that the new format is intended to help content creators bridge the difficulty and logistics gaps between making Youtube videos and full 360° VR content. The format will work with Google Cardboard and Daydream headsets, as well as the million-selling PlayStation VR. ...Read more...

Our post about the Steam sale yesterday ruffled some feathers. It seems fans of a few genres felt under-represented, so we're back again with another list of game recommendations for the 2017 Steam Summer Sale. If you missed our post yesterday, check it out for details on the sticker book event that Steam has running until the end of the sale, as well as the huge list of discounted games.

The trend in components over the last few years has been towards offering higher performance with less power draw. However, with the looming availability of Intel's high-core-count Skylake-X CPUs, AMD's Threadripper chips, and AMD's potentially thirsty Vega FE graphics cards, the low-power tide may be heading back out, at least with respect to top-of-the-line hardware. Silverstone's Strider Titanium PSU lineup is certainly ready for an increase in wattage demands. The series is growing from three to six members with the addition of the ST1100-TI, ST1300-TI, and ST1500-TI models. ...Read more...

Howdy gerbils. Things have been more than a little hot around here, but there's no time to lose. Deals are popping up and disappearing all the time, and we're here to catch'em while they're around. Here's this week's selection.There's a chance you're looking for something we haven't covered. If that's the case, you can help The Tech Report by using the following referral links when you're out shopping: not only do we have a partnership with Newegg ...Read more...

G.Skill just announced a whole range of quad-channel memory kits tailor-made for Intel's nascent X299 HEDT platform. The new kits are part of the company's top-tier Trident Z family, and they make use of Samsung's best DRAM chips to drive quad-channel DDR4 transfer rates up to 4200 MT/s. Not everyone can afford (or wants to pay for) the top-shelf grades, so G.Skill also has four- and eight-module kits coming out at transfer rates ranging down to 3600 MT/s. ...Read more...

When you're searching for an affordable laptop, one thing becomes clear pretty quickly: there's a strong correlation between price and style. Hunting for a lower price tag usually means settling for a big hunk of plastic. Asus wants to challenge that idea with its new VivoBook S510, a little machine that aims to combine good looks and affordability. Let's see if this machine's inner beauty is a match for its appearance. ...Read more...

Microsoft's work on the Fall Creators Update continues apace, and new features are rolling out steadily to Windows Insiders. Most notably, Microsoft has added a tool that will likely prove useful around our offices and anywhere else users need a quick look at the usage of their graphics cards. The Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16226 will give users detailed GPU information right in Task Manager. ...Read more...

Hold on to your butts, gerbils. It's time once again for the Steam Summer Sale. As usual, we've scoured the site's inventory for the best deals and came up with a veritable cornucopia of gaming goodness. First, though, let's talk about this year's Summer Sale entertainment gimmick. ...Read more...

The decade-plus reign of Gigabit Ethernet as the fastest practical standard for wired networking might be finally (and slowly) coming to a close. Over the last few months, we reported on the ratification of a standard for 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps networking over older Cat 5e cables, the integration of new-generation NICs into high-end motherboards, and the announcement of a reference add-on NICs from chipmaker Aquantia. Now Asus is offering up its own take on 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet with its XG-C100C network card, which also supports 10 Gbps over Cat 6 cables. ...Read more...

Gigabyte's latest motherboard is a little bit outside the scope of what we usually cover here at TR, but we figure that it deserves a look as it's the first motherboard we've seen for AMD's Epyc server processors. If you've ever wondered what a modern single-socket motherboard with sixteen memory slots looks like, have a gander at Gigabyte's MZ31-AR0. ...Read more...

Who could choose?

When we last heard from Imagination Technologies, the company was preparing to sell off its MIPS and Ensigma businesses as it girded itself for an extended legal battle with Apple over the use of its graphics IP. Today, the company says that in light of "interest from a number of parties for a potential acquisition of the whole Group," it's formally putting itself up for sale.Imagination isn't naming any of its suitors at this early stage, and it's received an exemption from the UK Takeover Panel from the requirement that any of its potential buyers be publicly identified, so we likely won't ...Read more...

All the attention lately has been on ultra-high-end graphics cards and expensive CPUs with cores for days, but work continues in the direction of getting more performance from meager resources. To wit, CryTek has quietly announced support for the low-level Vulkan graphics API in the upcoming CryEngine 5.4 game development package. ...Read more...

What's that? You say you want an RGB LED-backlit mechanical keyboard, but there just isn't enough choice out there? Please, then, allow Swedish peripheral manufacturer Mionix to suggest its first RGB LED keyboard, the Mionix Wei. ...Read more...

Few notebooks generate as much nostalgia around these parts as the ThinkPad. Two years ago, when Lenovo's chief design officer David Hill floated the idea of a retro-styled ThinkPad on his company blog, the response here and elsewhere was quite positive. Lenovo has been quiet about the project since then, though, content to let the rumor mill grind away. The company has now finally broken its silence and confirms that not only is the project alive, but that a retro ThinkPad will be released as part of the lineup's 25th anniversary celebration. ...Read more...

Netgear has added another member to its Nighthawk line of spider-spacecraft-inspired Wi-Fi routers. The Nighthawk X6S (model name R8000P) has tri-band Wi-Fi support with theoretical speeds of up to a combined 4000 Mbps through the air. ...Read more...

If you're going to the trouble of building a custom watercooling loop, you're probably building a pretty high-end system. Right now, if we're talking high-end graphics card, the buck stops at the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (unless you have $1200 to burn on the Titan Xp). To the delight of the most fervent of enthusiasts, EVGA has finally released its Hydro Copper edition of the GTX 1080 Ti, known in full as the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC Hydro Copper Gaming. ...Read more...

MSI's set of Lightning-labeled gear is growing again this summer with the addition of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z. This beefy two-and-a-half-slot graphics card offers up RGB LED lighting, an extensively-reinforced circuit board, and three clock profiles plus an LN2 DIP switch. ...Read more...

FinalWire has updated its popular AIDA64 benchmarking and system monitoring tool for use with Intel's latest Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X desktop CPUs and the accompanying X299 motherboard chipset. The AIDA64 5.92 update also includes improved support for AMD's Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 CPUs, the NVMe 1.3 protocol, and WDDM 2.2. ...Read more...

External GPU docks haven't really hit the mainstream yet. There are a variety of reasons for this, but among them could be the hassle, size, or price of the add-on enclosures. We saw Gigabyte's Aorus GTX 1070 Gaming Box a few weeks ago during Computex, and it looks like it tries to address all three of those complaints at once. Not only does the enclosure come pre-packed with an ITX-sized GeForce GTX 1070, it's also among the smallest external GPU boxes we've seen. ...Read more...

Late last year, AMD let us peek behind the curtain at its upcoming Radeon Instinct compute accelerators and Radeon Open Compute platform (ROCm). These accelerators are designed to challenge Nvidia in the fast-growing deep learning and machine intelligence markets. At the time, AMD was a bit coy about the Radeon Instinct MI25, an accelerator based on the highly-anticipated Vega architecture. Now that these cards are close to shipping, AMD opened up about the MI25's tech specs. ...Read more...

When you hear "Thermaltake", "understated" is probably not your word association go-to. The company sells a substantially wide range of cases, though, and its new Core G21 TG Edition is pretty restrained. Were it not for the solid sheets of tempered glass bolted to the sides, this ATX mid-tower chassis would barely stand out in an office, much less in a game room or a LAN party. ...Read more...

X marks the spot

Nvidia created a stir back in May when it introduced its Volta GPU compute architecture and a stack of products based on the preposterously large 815 mm² V100 chip. The company announced yesterday that the V100 product line will expand by one when the PCIe version of the the Tesla V100 compute card starts shipping by the end of the year. The card will join a suite of previously-announced products that use Nvidia's proprietary NVLink interconnect. ...Read more...

In the last three years since its debut, OnePlus has done a bang-up job of shaking things around in the smartphone market. The company just announced its new flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 5, and it looks like a treat. OnePlus says the 5 is its thinnest phone ever at just 7.3 mm. Despite its svelte body, the handset packs a Snapdragon 835 SoC, 6 GB to 8GB of LPDDR4X memory, a 3300-mAh battery, and a dual-sensor camera system. ...Read more...

The non-profit Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) has released an update of its popular CPU benchmarking tool, fittingly dubbed SPEC CPU2017. The new version contains 43 tests arranged into four suites that test CPUs' integer and floating-point performance under a multitude of workloads. Optionally, CPU2017 can measure power consumption during testing and take advantage of the OpenMP multiprocessing API. Updates to the tool are particularly noteworthy because they don't happen often; the previous version was released all the way back in 2006.Performance in SPEC's benchmarks are an industry-standard method of quantifying CPU performance across a wide range of tasks. The tool is based on code elements taken from real-world applications, rather than synthetic code or kernels. The benchmark is distributed as source code, which ...Read more...

Budget-friendly peripherals don't have be devoid of all personality. Cooler Master just announced the next generation of its Devastator keyboard and mouse combo. In addition to new backlighting color options, the Devastator 3 RGB Combo offers a few compelling updates while maintaining an affordable price tag. ...Read more...

The Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition is a great piece of hardware, there's no doubt about it. If you're running an open-loop liquid-cooled rig, though, getting that card integrated into your system will take a bit of work. Gigabyte wants to make sure it has a GTX 1080 Ti for every type of system, and liquid-cooling aficionados might want to turn their heads towards the just-released and long-named Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Waterforce WB Xtreme Edition 11G. ...Read more...

Not that long ago, Crytek was in the news for unfortunate reasons. Things are probably looking up at the German developer's offices, though. At E3, Crytek showed off a development gameplay video of its latest game, Hunt: Showdown. The company just shed some light on its dark, grimy new title. Check out the gameplay video below....Read more...

The two first words in "high end desktop platform" mean that buyers need to bring wallets stuffed with greenbacks in order to buy a ticket to the Intel Core-X and X299 party. The least expensive boards currently start at over $225 and the first go-round even includes an Aorus board with a $500 asking price. We haven't even seen the prices on the really over-the-top boards with integrated waterblocks and other fancy features. MSI is offering a little relief to both builders' wallets and Core-X CPU temperatures with its latest promotion, offering a free Corsair Hydro Series H75 AIO liquid cooler with the purchase of select MSI X299 motherboards at Newegg. ...Read more...

Virtual reality headsets are interesting fare, but a number of challenges remain in the march towards making them useful for many applications. Finnish outfit Varjo says it's made a breakthrough in increasing the resolution of VR displays to reduce the "screen door effect" that accompanies the current technology. The company—whose name means "shadow" in Finnish—has adapted Sony OLED microdisplays used in broadcast cameras for use in VR headsets for what it calls "vision-quality" images.

We were very excited when we heard that the Skylake-X-derived Core X-series CPUs would be significantly cheaper on a per-core basis than the Broadwell-E series that preceded it. The pricing on some of the chips toward the bottom of the series is downright reasonable—particularly the 6C/12T Core i7-7800X at $389. We were hopeful that the price pulldown would extend to the X299 platform itself, but we weren't sure what pricing on LGA 2066 motherboards would be like, at least until now. Newegg has 16 motherboards up for pre-order. Spoiler: they're a little pricey.

Intel's imminent Core-X CPUs and X299 chipset look ready to be bring a whole new level of performance for gaming and workstation tasks. Gerbils in the market for these high-octane processors will probably make their own systems from component parts, but not everyone is up for the hassle of selecing all the bits and pieces for a build—particularly if the system will be used for their livelihood. Velocity Micro has announced the availability of its ProMagix HD80, Raptor Z95 GX4, and Raptor Signature Edition PCs for those looking for Core-X performance with the convenience of a turn-key machine. ...Read more...

If you aren't much into game mods, you may not be aware that the Grand Theft Auto series has a rich machinima and modding tradition. Enterprising modders have have been extending and improving Take Two's beloved titles for some fifteen years now. The goods on offer are numerous, from simple modifications like adding extra cars and costumes, to advanced tweaks like custom car handling profiles and entire new areas, all the way up to turning GTA: San Andreas into an MMORPG. It seems that those mods may be a thing of the past now, though, seeing as Take-Two issued a cease-and-desist letter to the creators of the critically-important OpenIV mod tool, stating that modding the company's games is an "illegal" activity. ...Read more...