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Intel seems to be on a shopping spree of sorts lately. Not content with acquiring Saffron and Nervana, the chip manufacturer has now turned its attention and fat checkbook towards Movidius, a company specializing in computer vision and machine learning applications.

Dell's UltraSharp monitors have long been favorites among discerning PC users of all stripes, and the company is keeping that momentum going with minor updates to two of its more popular pro screens today. ...Read more...

be quiet! has plenty of experience cooling, powering, and housing PCs, and it's bringing that expertise to small-form-factor systems today with its Pure Rock Slim CPU cooler. This 125-mm-tall (5") tower makes the most out of the tight confines common around CPU sockets on Mini-ITX motherboards. Its fin stack has a cut-out section at its base to provide plenty of surface area for cooling without impinging on standard-size DIMMs or VRM heatsinks. ...Read more...

Benchlife.info is reporting that Nvidia will be answering AMD's Radeon RX 460 with a Pascal-powered GeForce GTX 1050. If that site's sources are correct, the new GP107 chip on this card includes 768 stream processors across six Pascal SMs. A 128-bit path to 4GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 7GT/sec, giving the card as much as 112GB/sec of memory bandwidth. If Benchlife's GPU-Z screenshot is correct, the card will have 32 ROPs and 64 texturing units. The card may run at 1316MHz base and 1380MHz boost clocks.

Razer makes more or less everything the PC enthusiast might need save for cases and the components that go inside, but it's been happy to solve the first problem by partnering with prominent case manufacturers. NZXT's S340 "Designed by Razer" mid-tower has that design language covered for ATX builders, but Mini-ITX fans who want to show their Razer stripes have been left out in the cold—until today, that is. Antec and Razer have teamed up to produce a version of the Antec Cube case in Razer black-and-green that's making its debut at PAX today. ...Read more...

Corsair has made a name for itself with its dual-chamber Carbide Series Air 240 and Carbide Series Air 540 cases. This design puts a system's power supply and storage in its own distinct chamber to reduce thermal cross-pollution and improve airflow. We've reviewed the microATX Carbide Series Air 240, but we haven't had a chance to play with one of the company's ATX dual-chamber designs until now. Say hello to the Carbide Series Air 740, the revised version of Corsair's big bicameral design. ...Read more...

If you're the sort of person who likes bling-bling on your PC hardware, Corsair's RGB family can hook you up. The Polaris RGB mouse pad and Crystal 460X mid-tower case join forces with the Void Wireless RGB headset, Lux keyboards, M65 Pro RGB mouse, and SP120 and HD120 RGB LED fans to ensure that you'll never be left in the dark again. ...Read more...

Razer's Blade and Blade Stealth laptops are getting some big updates before PAX this weekend. The potent Blade gaming laptop is trading up from a GTX 970M to the desktop-class GTX 1060. Meanwhile, the ultra-slim Blade Stealth laptop that we saw at CES this year is getting a few upgrades, including the latest Kaby Lake processors and a bigger battery. ...Read more...

Alienware teased the Internet a few days ago about an important product reveal, and the curtains have now opened. The company is showing off some hefty updates to its well-known lineup of gaming laptops. ...Read more...

Happy Friday, gerbils. We're on the eve of Labor Day weekend, and that means it's time for an avalanche of deals and "deals" alike. We've sorted the wheat from the chaff for you, and here's what we found.There's a chance you're looking for a deal on something we didn't feature here. 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 ...Read more...

The wild frontier of gaming hardware can get pretty extreme. A mouse with fifteen buttons or a keyboard with analog voodoo could be awesome for hardcore gamers who will take time to become proficient with them. For the casual player that still wants high performance from their peripherals, Logitech now offers the Prodigy series. This new line of gaming hardware focuses on high-end specs without any cruft, and comprises a keyboard, a headset, and wired and wireless mice. ...Read more...

Philips is bridging the gap between monitors and televisions with its 40" BDM4037UW. Despite the "UW" in the model number, this is a gently-curved 3840x2160 monitor, with a 16:9 aspect ratio. It uses some variety of vertical-alignment panel that may offer superior contrast to an IPS screen. Philips says this screen has a 4000:1 static contrast ratio. ...Read more...

Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 may not bend in regular use, but that's not much good when a small number of the devices are bursting into flames when owners put them on a charger. Samsung says it's traced the problem to faulty batteries. In response, the company is stopping sales of the Note 7 worldwide, recalling inventory in shipment, and setting up an exchange program for Note 7s that are already in the wild, according to an official statement and further reporting in the Wall Street Journal. ...Read more...

A couple years back, we shared a story about the Aimpad game controller. This set of Cherry MX keys was housed in a keypad with some secret-sauce that enabled the switches to transmit analog signals to the host system. The Kickstarter campaign wasn't successful, but the Aimpad team kept working on the concept, and it's now ready to share the fruits of its labors with the world. ...Read more...

Modular desktop PCs aren't a new concept, but the actual PCs that implement that idea haven't enjoyed widespread success in the market. HP may be looking to change that with its Elite Slice modular desktop PC. ...Read more...

Nvidia's VR Funhouse is a no-holds-barred tech demo for Pascal chips' VR-related features, and it's actually a fun little VR toy for those fortunate few with the requisite hardware. Nvidia promised to release the source code to the app for developers to use as guidance on implementing all of its VRWorks magic, and today the company has made good on that promise. Full source for Nvidia VR Funhouse is here on GitHub. Note that to access the source you'll have to link a (free) Unreal Engine developer account to your GitHub account....Read more...

While Oculus' Rift and HTC's Vive have dominated the conversation about VR in the enthusiast space, there's a burgeoning range of companies thinking about ways to deliver VR experiences that don't require a tether to a powerful gaming PC. Samsung's Gear VR is just one example, but Intel's Project Alloy and the AMD-powered Sulon Q also promise a cordless, entry-level VR experience. Qualcomm is getting in on this game today with an ambitious VR reference platform of its own called the VR820. Produced in partnership with Chinese electronics developer Goertek, the VR820 will serve as both a standalone product and as a reference platform for other companies to develop VR headsets of their own. ...Read more...

Folks who bought into AMD's promise of 1080 performance with a pair of RX 480s will be pleased to know that their dual-GPU desktop can now shine in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Battlefield 1's open beta. These new games are both extremely demanding, although they have the visuals to justify their hardware-mulching intensity. ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

AMD is altering the wafer supply agreement it's maintained with GlobalFoundries for some time now. In a rather cryptic press release issued this evening, the company says the new agreement "further strengthens our strategic manufacturing relationship with GLOBALFOUNDRIES while providing AMD with increased flexibility to build our high-performance product roadmap with additional foundries in the 14nm and 7nm technology nodes."As AMD tells it, the ...Read more...

Lenovo had a busy day at the IFA trade show. The company introduced a dramatically different new take on the 2-in-1 tablet called the Yoga Book. This 10.1" machine is Lenovo's first with a new interface it's calling the "halo keyboard." This design turns the half of the machine where a keyboard would traditionally go into a blank slate that can serve as both a keyboard and a pen input area. What's more, the Yoga Book is just 9.6 mm thick. ...Read more...

Toshiba is among the many companies presenting new products at IFA 2016. We aren't there to see them in person, but the electronics giant sent us all the details of its A100 2.5-inch SSDs. The new solid-state disks hook up to SATA 6Gbps ports, and use 15nm TLC NAND in combination with a new in-house Toshiba controller cryptically called "TC58NC1010". ...Read more...

Pretty much everybody has announced new Kaby Lake-powered machines at IFA Berlin, and Acer is no exception. Now, this may be personal taste, but "Acer" and "style" are two words we don't usually put together too often. That may be about to change, thanks to the introduction of the Swift lineup of ultraportables....Read more...

You may have explored Fallout 4's wasteland and possibly found it lacking in the "dark and scary" department. Fret not, for Nvidia has just what you need. The graphics card maker has just released its own take on a Fallout 4 mod, adding a new area and an underground vault for players to explore. ...Read more...

Acer's announced a whole pile of products at its IFA keynote this morning, and we're still sifting through them. The company seems to have a newfound fondness for Tobii's eye-tracking technology. Like that fancy laptop we reported on this morning, the three new Predator gaming monitors Acer announced—the Z271T, XB251HQT, and XB271HUT—support the new interface as a built-in feature. ...Read more...

Acer kicked off its IFA 2016 with a bang this morning. The company's Predator 21X notebook pushes the definition of that form factor to its very limits. Acer's designers started with a 21-inch curved display with a 2560x1080 resolution. The Predator 21X powers that vista with some variety of Kaby Lake CPU paired with dual GeForce GTX 1080 graphics chips. This machine also has a Cherry MX mechanical keyboard and Tobii eye-tracking technology built in. We don't have a full spec list for the rest of the machine yet, but honestly, it doesn't really matter. This thing is going to be nuts. ...Read more...

Tobii's EyeX gaze-tracking tech is starting to become a household name. The Swedish company seems to be solving the chicken-and-egg problem by getting both its hardware and software integrated into mobile hardware from a variety of manufacturers. Just today, Alienware put up a Youtube teaser telling people to check its online TV channel on September 2 at noon Eastern for "the latest in gaming technology."...Read more...

If you've taken a liking to Google's Chromebook Pixel 2, and you can still find one for sale, you may want to snatch it up. The high-end portable has all but disappeared from e-tail, and even Google's own store is out of Pixel 2 stock. VentureBeat contacted Google to find out what exactly the deal was, and the company says that it has no plans to restock its flagship Chromebook. While Google didn't say as much itself, that's a pretty clear sign the device is out of production. ...Read more...

We were having a lively discussion about the popularity of various PC form factors in TR's staff chat today, and it occurred to me that we haven't done a new poll in a while, so here we are. We want to know what form factor you chose to build your last system around. Maybe you went tiny with Mini-ITX or even Mini-STX. Perhaps you're a midsize fan and went microATX. Or—like we imagine is the case for many TR readers—you stuck to the traditional path and chose a plain old ATX motherboard and case. Whatever the case may be, tell us about the size of your last system using the poll options below.Read more...

At next week's IFA show in Berlin, LG is going to be showing off two new 21:9 monitors. The 38-inch 38UC99 and 34-inch 34UC79G are both high-performance ultrawide curved screens, although they serve radically different customers. The 34UC79G is a 2560x1080 ultrawide for gamers, while the 38UC99's applications are more nuanced. ...Read more...

Nvidia is keeping up its relentless pace of driver updates with version 372.70 of its Game Ready software. This new release is tuned for the Battlefield 1 open beta, World of Warcraft: Legion, and the Steam release of Quantum Break. This update also includes a fix for the DPC latency issue plaguing some Pascal graphics cards in multi-GPU setups. That move follows the inclusion of a similar fix for single-GPU systems in the last Game Ready driver update.This update also enables Nvidia's Fast Sync feature for Maxwell graphics cards. As a refresher, Fast Sync lets games render at high frame rates ...Read more...

Apple sent out a flurry of invitations to the tech press today that heralds another in a long line of its special events. This latest event will be held September 7. The tagline this time around—"See you on the 7th"—almost certainly means we'll be introduced to a new generation of iPhone hardware early next month. The company is once again renting out San Francisco's expansive Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to host this latest extravganza, another hint we're in for something big.And here it is! Apple iPhone (maybe Apple Watch?) event on ...Read more...

It's that time again. The Tech Report is looking for fresh news writers to help shape our broad coverage of the PC hardware and wider technology industries. If you're passionate about building, maintaining, or creating and gaming with PCs, and you want to share your passion with the world, our news desk is just the place to do it.Interested applicants must have an ironclad command of the English language. They should also be ready to quickly digest the raw material of a new product or breaking event and turn it into a well-structured story with clean copy. We appreciate folks who are motivated to learn under fire, as well. We try to move fast ...Read more...

Asus released the original X99-E WS motherboard back in 2014, and reviewers were fond of its generous expansion options. Given the success of that model, it's no surprise that Asus is updating it for Broadwell-E, with the appropriately-named X99-E-10G WS. ...Read more...

Nvidia is making a big push into virtualized graphics for businesses of late, and VR is the next domino to fall in the company's onward march. Nvidia is showing off a variety of VR demos at VMWorld this week using VMWare guests paired with its graphics cards. That stack powers environments generated with Iray VR and Nvidia's "point cloud" tech. The company will also have an Autodesk VRED collaborative design demo running at its booth. ...Read more...

As it has done in the past, Gigabyte is adding Thunderbolt support to more of its motherboards with nothing more than a firmware update. If you have a Z170X-Ultra Gaming, Z170X-UD3 Ultra, X170-WS ECC, Z170X-Designare, H170-Designare, or X99-Designare EX, you can add Thunderbolt 3 to its list of features with a free download. ...Read more...

The Pick 6

Corsair's lineup of mechanical gaming keyboards is no stranger to TR. Both the K70 RGB Rapidfire and the older K70 Vengeance models received our Editor's Choice awards. The company isn't one to just sit back and rest on its laurels, though, and has released a new set of backlit clickers bearing the "Lux" nametag.

Boy, Nixxes has been busy. Just two days after the first patch, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has gotten its second patch on the PC. This build—numbered 524.10—is another bugfix patch, this time addressing a number of "critical" user-reported issues, including that mouse problem we mentioned on Wednesday.Specifically, the patch adds separate X and Y axes to the mouse sensitivity slider, and also increases the range of those adjustments. Nixxes also fixed issues with missing level geometry in Dubai, ...Read more...

Samsung posted a video to its YouTube channel recently describing the company's monitor lineup for late 2016. The video talks about a lot of monitors, but of particular note is the upcoming CF791 curved monitor. This 34-inch FreeSync display comes in 3440x1440 resolution, and boasts 3000:1 static contrast thanks to its VA LCD panel. ...Read more...

Howdy, gerbils. It's time for another round of the finest PC hardware and technology deals on the internet this week.There's a chance you're looking for a deal on something we didn't feature here. 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 ...Read more...

Remember the DeLorean? Thermaltake may have been taking some inspiration from that iconic vehicle when designing its View 27. This tool-less mid-tower ATX case uses a gullwing side-and-top door that allowed Thermaltake to fit a continuous window spanning the majority of the top and side of the case. ...Read more...

A few days ago, we reported on a story from Tom's Hardware about the power on offer from PCI Express 4.0 expansion slots. Tom's had been in touch with PCI-SIG, the governing body of the standard, and the site reported that PCI Express 4.0 would not only double the throughput of PCIe 3.0, but that it would also allow expansion cards to draw "a minimum of 300W" from the motherboard.As it happens, the data on PCIe 4.0's upgraded bandwidth was accurate, but apparently someone at PCI-SIG gave Tom's incorrect information regarding the power provisions in the new standard. Currently, PCI Express 3.0 cards may draw 75W from the expansion slot, and an additional 225W from auxiliary ...Read more...

We don't normally cover minor releases of iOS, but we're making an exception today as a sort of public service announcement. Apple has released an urgent update for iOS, version 9.3.5, that contains fixes for three zero-day vulnerabilities. The issues comprise two kernel-level exploits and a WebKit vulnerability, and have been confirmed to be under active attack.The security issues were collectively found by researchers from Citizen Lab (University of Toronto) and the Lookout security company. Apple's security team worked in tandem with the researchers and was "very responsive," releasing a combined fix ...Read more...

Intel is pushing NVMe SSDs further into the mainstream today with its SSD 600P Series drives. These M.2 gumsticks use the same Intel-Micron 3D TLC NAND that we're starting to see in more and more SSDs of late. That NAND lets Intel deliver these drives at prices similar to that of high-end SATA storage while offering sequential read speeds far beyond what any SATA drive can achieve. Here's the full SSD 600P lineup:At costs per gigabyte ranging from 53 cents for the 128GB drive to just 35 cents for the 1TB model, these drives are among the most competitively-priced NVMe SSDs we've seen so far. Samsung's 950 Pro ...Read more...

Canon's EOS 5D series is a seminal line of cameras in the world of DSLRs. The original 5D offered amateurs one of the first accessible full-frame (36- by 24-mm) sensors, and the EOS 5D Mark II became famous for its popularity among pro videographers. By all accounts, the EOS 5D Mark III is a great camera, but it was overshadowed somewhat by the ultra-high-resolution sensor in the 50-MP 5DS series. Now, Canon is updating its evergreen all-rounder with the EOS 5D Mark IV. This camera blends high resolution and speed with a 30.4-MP sensor capable of capturing still images at seven frames per second. ...Read more...

Adata is bringing out a new series of Ultimate SSDs today, spearheaded by the SU800. These 2.5-inch SATA drives will come in capacities from 128GB to 1TB, and they'll use 3D TLC flash memory. That density should Adata to keep costs down and prices low. Adata says it's using 3D floating-gate flash in the SU800, a strong suggestion this drive is using the same Micron 3D NAND we saw in Crucial's MX300. ...Read more...

At Computex earlier this year, Thermaltake's Core G3 chassis caught our eye. By designing this slim ATX case to be usable in both horizontal and vertical orientations, Thermaltake created an enclosure that seems as well-suited to life in the living rooms as it does for the office. ...Read more...

Alienware's made a name for itself selling high-performance gaming systems to high-powered wallets. The recent release of AMD's Polaris-powered Radeons didn't escape the company's glossy black eyes, and it's now revealed a trio of desktop systems built around AMD's latest. ...Read more...

Now that the graphics market is somewhat competitive again, Nvidia and AMD are no longer sweetening their products with free game offers as much as they did in the 28-nm days. The pack-in wars aren't entirely over, though. Nvidia and AMD have both announced new game promotions for their products recently, so let's see what's on offer. ...Read more...