Techreport

At its press conference this morning in Taipei, AMD gave us a look at a broad range of upcoming products. Let's get the most important news out of the way first: AMD's Radeon RX Vega card (or cards) will arrive at the ACM SIGGRAPH conference, running from July 30 to August 3. As we learned at the company's Financial Analyst Day recently, the Radeon RX Vega won't be the first Vega card to launch. That honor goes to the Vega Frontier Edition, arriving June 27. ...Read more...

Judging by recent product launches, the most important feature in a new stick of memory these days isn't speed, reliability, or capacity. You know what it is: RGB LEDs. Ballistix has now joined the epic rave party taking place inside our computer cases with its new Tactical Tracer DDR4 RGB memory. ...Read more...

With AMD's latest Ryzen AGESA coming in June and bearing the promise of an extended range of memory multipliers, it wouldn't surprise us to hear that owners of Ryzen processors might be eyeballing a memory upgrade. Or maybe some folks out there are checking the bank account to see if they can pull off a new build with one of Intel's Core X-series CPUs. Either way, HyperX just updated its line of Predator DDR4 memory with new kits capable of keeping pace with high-end processors from either camp. ...Read more...

Dell has a bunch of new desktops systems on the way. The company announced the Inspiron Gaming Desktop this week, as well as a pair of AMD-powered Inspiron all-in-one systems. ...Read more...

Asus' ROG Swift PG35VQ packs pretty much every buzzword one could hope for with respect to a top-of-the-line gaming monitor in 2017. The 35" ultra-wide 21:9 display has a quantum-dot infused panel with a 3440x1440 resolution, can hit refresh rates up to 200 Hz, and has support for Nvidia's G-Sync adaptive refresh rate tech. ...Read more...

Toshiba's NAND foundries are spinning up 64-layer versions of the company's BiCS 3D flash memory now, and those chips are marking their first launch aboard a Toshiba storage product today with the XG5 NVMe SSD. This M.2 gumstick will be sold through Toshiba's OEM business, but it could herald interesting developments for the next generation of OCZ client drives. ...Read more...

In May, Toshiba made some headlines when it announced that its 64-layer BiCS flash memory was about to debut in consumer devices. As it turns out, Western Digital is the first to bring this 3D NAND to market, courtesy of a NAND supply agreement between Toshiba and Sandisk, which WD acquired in 2015. The new drives will retail under the company's WD Blue and Sandisk Ultra brands. ...Read more...

If you're like me, you like to play video games, and you can't be bothered carrying around two laptops. That makes us the perfect candidates for a machine like EVGA's new SC15 gaming laptop. Despite having legitimate gamer credentials in the form of a Core i7-7700HQ CPU and a GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, this 15.6" laptop wouldn't look out of place in a boardroom. ...Read more...

Sometimes holes in a bucket are a good thing.

Today's the release party for Intel's Core-X series CPUs and the corresponding X299 chipset, and everyone's dressed to the nines for the event. Joining the extravaganza of X299 motherboards announced today are three boards from EVGA ready to put those massive, power-hungry CPUs to work. ...Read more...

AMD is still playing coy about its upcoming Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, but Asus isn't afraid to show off its ROG Zenith Extreme mobo for those chips. This motherboard uses AMD's forthcoming X399 chipset and TR4 socket, built specifically for Threadripper. The Zenith Extreme has eight DDR4 DIMM slots for use with X399's four memory channels and four metal-reinforced PCIe 3.0 x16 slots to use with as many as 64 PCIe 3.0 lines provided by the Threadripper CPUs. ...Read more...

Yesterday at Computex our man on the ground Tony got an early look at the laptops that Asus would be showing off. What he didn't get to see was the company's upcoming ROG Zephyrus GX501 ultra-slim hardcore gaming laptop. Yes, you read that correctly. First, have a look at this thing. ...Read more...

EVGA offers seven different takes on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. All the non-Founders Edition models sport the company's iCX design with multiple temperature sensors, microcontrollers, and asynchronous fans. The iCX setup is fun stuff for tweakers, but EVGA's latest GeForce GTX 1080 Ti K|NGP|N Edition (Kingpin from here forward) takes the monitoring capabilities of all those sensors and adds a host of overclocking-specific features, including a unique all-copper heatsink and a connector for EVGA's EVBOT overclocking automation tool. The result is a card guaranteed to achieve a core boost clock of at least 2025 MHz. ...Read more...

Slim-and-light has been the name of the game for smartphones and notebooks for some time now. However, gaming notebooks have in general remained unwieldy and cumbersome. As part of Nvidia's Max-Q program—an initiative to make gaming laptops more efficient, thin, and quiet—Acer's Predator Triton 700 bucks this trend. It fits impressive gaming hardware into a slim aluminum chassis, including a GeForce GTX 1080 card. ...Read more...

Gaming laptops have gotten thinner and lighter in recent years, but they still tend to be thick, heavy bruisers that aren't any fun to carry between power plugs. Nvidia wants to change all that with a program called Max-Q, its in-house initiative to help gaming laptop makers build machines it describes as "3x thinner" and with "3.3X more performance" than the typically truckish GTX 880M-equipped gaming laptop of a couple years past. There are several fancy Max-Q notebooks debuting at Computex this week, but they all seem to share several basic characteristics: a chassis under 0.8" (20 mm) thick, a weight of around five pounds, and a GTX 1080 pushing pixels.One can't just shove the full 110W of the mobile GTX 1080 inside a relatively thin-and-light chassis, of course. Similar restrictions apply for the mobile GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 in their Max-Q trims. Nvidia says part of Max-Q is "operating the GPU for peak efficiency," which ...Read more...

The impending release of Intel's X299 high-end desktop platform has been one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry lately. There have been jokes running around the TR Slack of late about referring to it as another buffalo, but the overall reaction was "eh, why bother?" The chipset is out, the socket is LGA 2066, and Gigabyte has four super-fancy boards ready for Intel's Core X-series CPUs. Meet the Aorus X299 Gaming series.We'll talk about four models in turn, but let's first take a look at all of the common features among them. The high-endness of these offerings is quite visible from the outset, since the boards pack a massive backplate. Depending on the exact model, there are RGB LEDs with Gigabyte's RGB Fusion software running the show. One might find RGB LEDs around the PCIe slots, DIMM sockets, and even ...Read more...

So you're all hyped and ready to plunk down the considerable chunk of change for an Intel Core i9 CPU. The question is, what motherboard should you put it in? Asus is ready with no less than seven boards equipped with the requisite X299 chipset for your shiny new CPU. Three models from the Republic of Gamers are joined by two "Prime" boards and two board from the company's TUF series.

Intel took the wraps off its Core X-series CPUs and X299 platform this morning, and MSI is ready with three X299 motherboards to host those CPUs. We'll be meeting with MSI later this week to learn more about its X299 hardware, but for now, take a gander at the X299 Gaming M7 ACK, the X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, and the X299 Tomahawk. ...Read more...

Happy Memorial Day, gerbils. While you're presumably kicking back with a hot dog and beer, we're in balmy Taipei, Taiwan for the kickoff of Computex 2017. The first event of substance was a combined press conference by Asus and Intel. Asus chairman Jonney Shih took to the stage to unveil the company's latest and greatest laptops. Steel yourself for a lot of superlatives.

Any gerbils out there using Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 may want to take note, particularly if they use Internet Explorer on those systems. A security vulnerability has come to light (Google Translation), affecting those operating systems. A malicious local application or even a website (with IE in the mix) can potentially crash a machine simply by sending a carefully-crafted request to access a local file.The exploit results from a bug in the way Windows handles protected filenames . In this specific case, the offending file is $MFT, which is reserved for a bit of NTFS metadata. There's a hidden $MFT file in the root of every NTFS volume, and normally Windows won't let you access ...Read more...

Aerocool has been rapidly expanding its lineup of case- and cooling-focused gear for a while. Computex 2017 is as good a time and place as any for the company to show Project 7, its newest series of products. The Project 7 line comprises fans, a fan controller hub, cases, and power supplies. Let's take a look at each item in turn. ...Read more...

When I think about liquid cooling, Enermax isn't the first company that comes to mind, even though it's been selling AIO coolers for a while now. The company is probably looking to change that perception and is making headway into the custom-loop liquid cooling market with the NeoChanger pump-and-reservoir combo....Read more...

Acer will be showing more than PCs, laptops, and displays at Computex. The company is also bringing a couple of new 10" Android tablets. The Iconia Tab 10 (A3-A50) has four forward-facing speakers and a whiz-bang quantum-dot display for increased maximum brightness and color saturation. Meanwhile, the Iconia One 10 (B3-A40FHD) sports two USB-OTG ports, letting users simultaneously charge the tablet and use USB peripherals like a mouse, keyboard, or flash drive. Don't mistake the new models for the existing Iconia 10, model A3-A30-18P1. That one has a "regular" IPS display and an Intel Atom SoC. ...Read more...

Greeting, gerbil boys and gerbil girls! The large amount of news published yesterday probably tipped you off to the fact that Computex 2017 is about to start. We're making doomsday preparations around TR HQ, readying up for the inevitable deluge of announcements and press releases. So far we have three boxes of matches and five cans of baked beans. I think we're on the right track for surviving next week. Despite all the prep work underway, we still managed to scavenge some hardware deals for your perusal. Here you go.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...

MSI has a wide range of products to display at Computex this year—so many, in fact, that we'll have to tackle them a few at a time. Here, we'll take a peek at the company's upcoming desktop systems. The company has a handful of desktops for the living room, home office, and workplace: the Vortex G25VR, Infinite-A, and Pro 20EX. ...Read more...

All told, setting up a gaming PC isn't that hard these days. It's not like back when I was a teenager and we had to fiddle with IRQ assignments, DIP switches, and jumpers. Even if you don't want to build a computer yourself, there are boutique vendors offering pre-configured hardware. Nvidia is apparently concerned that some folks aren't getting the best experience, though. The company just announced the GeForce GTX Battlebox certification program, intended to make sure buyers of prebuilt gaming PCs are getting a machine that will meet a certain performance level. ...Read more...

Parents and students alike might not be ready to hear this, but back-to-school season is a few short months away. That means it's time for notebook manufacturers to update their lineups in anticipation of those end-of-summer sales events. Accordingly, Acer has a new Spin convertible and a lineup of Nitro 5 gaming notebooks to show off at Computex this year—all with affordable price tags. ...Read more...

Over the past couple months, we've come to understand that memory speed and latency plays a major role in Ryzen CPU performance. Higher speeds and lower latencies are desirable for getting the most out of a Ryzen chip. Outside of a few motherboards with external base-clock generators, however, the memory multipliers for Ryzen CPUs have maxed out at 32. With a 100-MHz default base clock, that means builders have been limited to running overclocked RAM at DDR4-3200 speeds.Today, that all changes. AMD has announced that its AMD Generic Encapsulated System Architecture, or AGESA, version 1.0.0.6 will expose 26 new RAM tuning settings to tweakers looking ...Read more...

Zotac is probably more known for its mini-PCs than its graphics products. The company was doing "NUC-likes" before the NUC existed, and it continues to produce some of the more interesting mini-PCs around. At Computex, Zotac will be showing off no less than nine new takes on the Zbox idea, plus an intriguing gaming machine called MEK.

Kingston has shipped M.2 SATA SSDs and PCIe NVMe drives. It has even offered M.2 NVMe drives under its HyperX gaming brand. However, we believe the new KC1000 lineup is Kingston's first M.2 NVMe offering released under its mainstream brand. This move can be interpreted as a sign that NVMe storage devices are moving from the enterprise and high-end PC arenas into the the consumer space. ...Read more...

In case you don't follow tech news the way members of the press do, Computex Taipei starts next week. We won't have hard details on most of the products until the actual show, but everyone's whetting our appetites with promotional preview packets. Zotac is bringing a whole cart of goodies, including a bunch of mini-PCs and a couple of new graphics cards. We'll check out the mini-PCs in a minute, but for now, feast your eyes on the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Mini. ...Read more...

No panicking here.

MSI already offers a staggering nine different takes on Nvidia's range-topping GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with anywhere from zero to three fans on board. Someone within the company must think that there are unfilled niches in the high-end graphics card space. MSI will be showing at least two new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti models at Computex at the end of the month. ...Read more...

Teasers for next week's Computex event are starting to trickle out. The CPU-cooling gurus over at Cryorig sent over information about a new lineup of copper heatsinks affectionately called Cu, and an upcoming Cryorig R5 tower cooler. Let's take a look at the aluminum job first. ...Read more...

Gaming PC components seem to gain more armor and protection with every product generation. Witness the proliferation of motherboard armor, metal-reinforced PCIe slots, and full-coverage coolers and backplates on graphics cards. However, the trend for cases moved in the opposite direction, with steel casing having given way some time ago to ventilation and viewing windows, and even grilles and glass sometimes being replaced by an absence of panels. Cougar's Conquer PC enclosure goes one step further in the direction of letting PC parts fend for themselves. ...Read more...

NVMe drives are just beginning to hit the mainstream, and the interface's designers have published the 1.3 revision of the NVMe specification. Version 1.3 is the spec's first big revision since 2014, and is notable for the inclusion of several features found in other storage protocols including the venerable ATA and SATA, as well as the decidedly low-end eMMC. Most of the new features are optional, but we expect at least a portion of them will become widespread on consumer drives due to their usefulness. ...Read more...

MSI has been teasing a new motherboard from its Godlike series for a bit now, primarily on Twitter. Eager enthusiasts were chomping at the bit for more information, because the persistent rumor was that the new board would be MSI's debut of the hotly-anticipated X299 platform. Sadly that's not the case, but the company's new Z270 Godlike Gaming still looks pretty swanky. ...Read more...

Sapphire just announced a new branch in its GPro family of business graphics cards. For the unaware, the GPro cards aren't intended to compete with Radeon Pro products for the 3D modelling or compute markets. They're aimed at uses like medical imaging, digital signage, kiosks, and other commercial applications. The new lineup is called the E-series, no doubt because it's based on the Radeon E-series embedded hardware. The lineup comprises four cards, ranging from the Polaris-based GPro E9260 down to the positively puny GPro E6465.

Our peripheral guides make it clear: we like variable-refresh-rate displays, and we think that any gamer who sits down in front of one will fall in love with the silky-smooth motion on the screen. Gamers looking for Nvidia's G-Sync technology in a premium package might want to take a look at Acer's Predator Z35P display, which puts the VRR tech into a curved, ultrawide package. ...Read more...

Fractal Design has expanded its lineup of cases downward. The new ATX-size Focus G and the micro-ATX Focus G Mini offer steel-and-plastic construction with a composite side window. Each case ships with a pair of Fractal Silent Series PWM-controlled fans with white LED illumination. ...Read more...

The USB Type-C connector promises universal compatibility and frustration-free connections, but the dizzying array of protocols that can connect through that physical interface can result in a frustrating trudge through manufacturers' spec sheets to figure out just how fast one's USB device will run from a given Type-C connector. ...Read more...

I remember the Cooler Master Cosmos being one of the first cases that really caught my eye. I picked it up and it housed various builds for me for a long time. I eventually replaced it with something smaller, but the Cosmos II carried on its legacy for many PC enthusiasts. Now, Cooler Master is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special edition of the Cosmos II that updates the design in a few key ways without discarding the characteristics that made it such a popular case. ...Read more...

Huawei has been able to capture at least a little attention in the North America with high-spec smartphones at mainstream prices. The company's Surface-like MateBook may not have had the same kind of impact, but the Chinese manufacturer is trying to court more Americans to its portable PC lineup with the conventional MateBook D, the hybrid-tablet MateBook E, and the MacBook-Surface Laptop-hybrid MateBook X. ...Read more...

Between fan controllers, thermal sensors, and the standard system connections, tweakers already have too many wires to mess with. When you throw in one or more RGB LED lightstrip controllers, things can really get jumbled. Fortunately, Corsair has a solution for the ones who have everything: the Commander Pro system controller. ...Read more...

RIP Tangy Taffy

If cars were like phones, most of the commercials on TV would show high-end sports cars and supercars, not the mid-range stuff. And if phones were more like cars, we'd see a lot more ads about LG's new AT&T-exclusive X Venture phone, a piece of hardware built to take a mighty beating and keep rolling. ...Read more...

You will be hard-pressed to find a more aggressive advocate of high-refresh-rate gaming than myself, and yet even I have to pause when looking at AOC's Agon AG251FG. This 24.5" G-Sync gaming display boasts of refresh rates ranging from 48Hz all the way up to 240Hz. ...Read more...

Liquid-cooled PC components are all the rage these days. There are CPU water blocks, liquid-cooled graphics cards, motherboards, and even SSDs on offer from a host of manufacturers. The extension of liquid cooling to the largest fan-cooled device in most PCs seems like a logical next step. FSP is the company taking that step with its PTM+ liquid-cooled power supply, co-developed with the liquid cooling specialist outfit Bitspower. ...Read more...

Time to head over to the hardware store, gerbils, and pick up a truckload of salt. There are leaked pictures making the rounds of an as-yet-unannounced graphics card from Nvidia, and they're leading to all sorts of interesting speculation. The story goes like this: Reddit users noticed these pictures on the Facebook page of a purported Nvidia intern. There's even a picture that supposedly shows the man's Nvidia office badge, not that we would share such a thing here. In the Facebook comments, the intern reportedly used the phrase "Titan X Volta."

Microsoft released its latest and greatest Surface Pro at an event in Shanghai this morning. The new Surface Pro drops version numbers from its name for consistency with the rest of the Surface lineup, and that's just the first of many refinements the company made to its tablet-laptop hybrid (tabtop?). ...Read more...