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Sometimes it's good for a company to put all of its focus into a single product family, and sometimes it's better to diversify. Judging by the list of products that it's showing off at Computex this year, MSI has chosen the latter. Here's a quick breakdown of MSI's upcoming laptops, desktops, and components. ...Read more...

HP has been more or less absent from the gaming scene for a bit—until now. The company is announcing the Omen branding as a new portfolio of gaming products. All four items announced today wear the black-and-red color scheme typical of gamer-oriented hardware, and downplay the HP branding to prominently display an almost-indescribable Omen diamond logo.Back in 2006—possibly following in Dell's footsteps —HP purchased Canadian boutique PC vendor VoodooPC, whose flagship product was the Omen gaming desktop. A few other products arose from that purchase, ...Read more...

Back in March, Crytek started offering its Cryengine V game engine to developers on a "pay-what-you-want" scheme. Today, developers don't even need to go to the trouble of paying $0 for the engine to check it out. The source code is now publicly available on GitHub....Read more...

Zotac floated a press release across our desks this morning formally announcing its presence at Computex 2016. The release is full of juicy details on new machines in the Zbox E, P, C, and M series that the micro-PC experts will be showing in Taipei next week. ...Read more...

If you're dreaming of some big mechanical storage to go with one of the upcoming OCZ RD400 SSDs that Toshiba announced yesterday, there's some more good news for you. The company has released an 8TB SATA HDD in its consumer X300 series that could fill that HDD-sized hole in your life.Like the previously released 4TB X300, the new X300 spins its 8TB at 7200RPM and has 128MB of cache. It uses perpendicular magnetic recording but opts for plain-old air rather than the helium we have seen in some higher-end drives. Other manufacturers have released 8TB drives, but only one other model is targeted at desktops, rather than enterprise or NAS storage—the ...Read more...

Hot on the heels of Gartner’s announcement that Windows Phone's market share had dropped to less than 1%, we have some unsurprising follow-up news this morning. The Verge is reporting that Microsoft intends to cut 1,850 more jobs, primarily in its mobile division in Finland. ...Read more...

Over the past few years, Corsair has expanded from its roots as a premium RAM provider to become nearly a one-stop shop for the PC builder. The company's closed-loop liquid coolers, power supplies, memory, cases, storage, and peripherals are all high-quality parts, and they're deservedly popular. The Bulldog PC kit takes all of the expertise the company has gathered making those discrete components and wraps it up into one neat, stealthy-looking box. Corsair has been teasing the Bulldog since last year's Computex, and after a long series of refinements, the company is finally ready to sic the Bulldog on the living room. ...Read more...

We recently reported on big changes in the OCZ SSD lineup under Toshiba. OCZ’s previous line of SSDs was cut down to just two SATA drives. The upcoming RD400 PCIe SSD was simply listed as "coming soon," with no indication of when OCZ would be back in the PCIe SSD market. Today "soon" has come, and Toshiba has announced its OCZ RD400 NVMe SSD. This drive can use four lanes of PCIe Gen3 connectivity to deliver some impressive claimed performance numbers. ...Read more...

With its 850 series solid-state disks, Samsung did away with the non-EVO, non-Pro base model in its lineup, leaving folks in the market for a cheap-yet-quality SSD looking elsewhere. In February of this year, Samsung sought to fill the hole at the bottom end of its product stack with the 750 EVO series of budget solid-state drives, but the small capacities and limited availability of that lineup made the drives less compelling than they otherwise might have been. Today Samsung is announcing a 500GB 750 EVO to go with its 120GB and 250GB drives, and it'll now be offering those drives worldwide. ...Read more...

Here’s a line you may have read before: Windows Phone had a pretty rough time of it last quarter. While the underdog smartphone OS has always struggled to maintain significant market share, it looks like Microsoft's mobile platform may now be struggling to stay on the market at all. In the first quarter of 2016, Windows Phone’s market share dropped to 0.7%, down from 2.5% in the same quarter of last year, according to Gartner.The same report from Gartner says that as a whole, the smartphone market growth spurt seems to be coming to an end. In the first quarter of 2015 , global smartphone sales grew 19.3% year-over-year. ...Read more...

Computex 2016 starts next week, and news is trickling in about the hardware that'll be on display at the trade fair. Cryorig has teased two PC cases it currently has in development. The first is the Ola, a cylindrical Mini-ITX case, and the second is the Taku, a space-saving Mini-ITX case that doubles as a monitor stand. ...Read more...

It's a good season for PC gaming, all right. There have been more than a few high-profile releases lately, and one could say graphics driver teams are working hard to keep up with the demand. AMD's team just released Radeon Software Crimson Edition version 16.5.3, which is optimized for Blizzard's Overwatch, Total War: Warhammer, and the Vulkan-enabled version of DotA 2. ...Read more...

Nvidia may have revealed the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 recently, but it's a fair bet the lineup of 10-series graphics cards won't stop with those two models. A new rumor from the prodigious leakers at ChipHell suggests a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and a new GTX Titan are both on the way, along with a GTX 1060 at the lower end of the market. Here's ChipHell's rumored spec table: ...Read more...

There's only two months to go before the next TR BBQ. This post is specifically aimed at TR gerbils that won't be able to attend in person. We have a new trick up our sleeves for our live stream this year: a Ricoh Theta S. This camera can live-stream 360-degree spherical video to YouTube. Every gerbil watching the stream will be able to pan the camera around individually to focus on what they want to watch. Here are a couple still photos to give you an idea of what to expect. We have more images and a video in the BBQ thread.

A couple days ago, we learned that the Revive patch—a compatibility layer that allows HTC Vive owners to play games from the Oculus Store on their headsets without an Oculus Rift—was broken by a recent update to Oculus' software. That update changed Oculus' DRM model to check whether a Rift was connected to the host PC before allowing Oculus Home games to run. While Oculus had previously warned that hacks of its software wouldn't be guaranteed to function in the long term, the VR enthusiast community has since come to regard Oculus' move as an aggressive attempt to lock down its platform.Now, Revive's developer has fired back with a new version of the patch that bypasses Oculus' DRM entirely for Unreal Engine titles on the Oculus Store, allowing those titles to run on the HTC Vive once again. This patch comes with side effects, though. Revive's developer ...Read more...

If you’re a GeForce user looking forward to Blizzard’s Overwatch release tomorrow, Nvidia has a pre-game treat for you. The company has released its latest WHQL-certified GeForce 368.22 driver with performance optimizations and SLI profiles for the class-based shooter. ...Read more...

Leap Motion released a whole-hand motion-tracking controller back in 2013. In February, the company updated its software to better complement the upcoming VR headsets. Now, the company has released a more nuts-and-bolts product to make using its controller in VR easier: an official mounting kit for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. ...Read more...

Purchasers of a Founder's Edition GeForce know exactly what board design they're getting. That certainty is especially important to liquid-cooling enthusiasts who need to make sure their hardware will fit. EK Waterblocks is catering to those Founders Edition early adopters with its latest product, the EK-FC1080 GTX. As you could probably guess from the model number, the new water block is a full-coverage affair for GTX 1080s. ...Read more...

We talk a lot about monitors around here, but we rarely come across one as unusual as the Dell P4317Q. This 43" 4K monster is the latest addition to Dell’s Professional display series. It comes with a robust set of ports: a standard DisplayPort 1.2 input, a Mini DisplayPort 1.2 input, two HDMI 1.4 inputs, even a VGA connection. It’s also equipped with four USB 3.0 ports, a headphone output, and an RS-232 serial port for "remote management." Then things get really weird. Dell says the P4317Q can operate as a standard 4K display, or as four independent 1920x1080 displays from four inputs. ...Read more...

Apple has pulled iOS version 9.3.2 for its 9.7" iPad Pro today after users reported that the update caused their devices to enter an unusable state. iMore's Rene Ritchie shared a Tweet with a statement from Apple that confirms the take-down. ...Read more...

Halo fans, rejoice! Halo 5 is sorta-kinda-arriving on the PC... ish. Microsoft has announced Forge - Halo 5: Guardians Edition, which brings Halo's Forge level builder and limited multiplayer support to Windows 10. ...Read more...

Google's Chrome browser is a dominant force in the web-browser market. According to NetMarketShare.com, Chrome holds about 43% of the browser market. Google has never been shy about using its dominant position to make changes to the way we use the web, from removing support for the aging NPAPI plugin model to tightening the noose on Flash-based content. Now, Google is considering making a more esoteric change. According to Engadget, some "Canary" versions of Chrome remove the ability to go back using the backspace key.This move may seem like a strange choice, but Google is backing the decision up with some numbers . According to Google, only 0.04% of page views conclude with a backspace-as-back ...Read more...

Oculus updated its Rift desktop software to version 1.4 this week. The update itself doesn't sound like that big a deal on its face. The VR headset maker says this point release contains improvements for the Rift's performance, stability, and sensor tracking, as well as the usual bug fixes and some localization improvements. However, some HTC Vive owners have discovered that this update breaks compatibility with the Revive patch, a third-party software tool that allowed users of HTC's headset to play titles that were otherwise exclusive to the Oculus store.Revive's developer confirmed that the patch no longer works with the latest version of Oculus' software in a post on Reddit . The new version of the software apparently makes sure that an Oculus headset is connected to the host PC by way of the Oculus ...Read more...

Happy Friday, Gerbils, and welcome to another of our storied deals-of-the-week posts. We’ve got a lot of returning alumni this week, and a few newcomers. Take a look.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 , but ...Read more...

Happy Friday, Gerbils, and welcome to another of our storied deals-of-the-week posts. We’ve got a lot of returning alumni this week, and a few newcomers. Take a look.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 , but ...Read more...

AMD has announced a showcase of its "latest technology" at Computex Taipei 2016. The company says the event will feature the launch of its 7th-generation (Bristol Ridge) APUs, "Polaris updates, and more." We talked about Bristol Ridge at length back in April, but the short version is that these new APUs are refined versions of Carrizo chips with DDR4 support. ...Read more...

In a market first, Chromebook manufacturers moved more of their wares than Apple did Macs in the USA last quarter, according to a statement that market research firm IDC made to The Verge. IDC figures that Apple sold 1.76 million Macs in the US last quarter, up from 1.56 million in the same quarter of 2015. IDC only breaks out PC shipments by manufacturer, not by operating system, so we don’t know exactly how many more Chromebooks were shipped compared to Macs.While that shipment number is an important milestone for Chromebooks, it is a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. Apple's Macs span form factors from thin-and-light laptops to workstation-style desktops, and they sell at premium prices. Chromebooks ...Read more...

The Slovenian liquid cooling company EK Waterblocks has announced a new pump and reservoir combo today in its Xres series: the EK-Xres 100 SPC-60 MX PWM. The EK-SPC 60 pump in this combo is a PWM variable-speed unit with a maximum flow rate of 450 liters per hour. The compact reservoir comes attached to the pump and holds 125mL of coolant. All told, this unit should offer a compact, simple design for builders who are just getting into liquid cooling, or who want a simple, compact pump and reservoir for a Mini-ITX build. ...Read more...

Thermaltake is beating the Computex rush by showing off the latest in the Versa N line of gamer-focused cases, the N26. Compared to its siblings in the Versa N-series, it features relatively understated styling with smooth, straight lines and softly rounded surfaces. This full-sized steel ATX case is a modern, PSU-on-bottom design with what Thermaltake is calling "1+4+1" drive bays. That bit of marketing-speak describes the case's single 5.25" bay, four 3.5" bays, and single 2.5" mount. Three of the 3.5" bays are on removable drive trays that can also accept 2.5" drives. Seven expansion slots and support for graphics cards up to 360mm in length mean builders could pack in some serious power. ...Read more...

The as-yet-unnamed Android N was officially announced during Google's I/O 2016 Keynote. For those fortunate enough to own a Nexus or Pixel C device, the beta release can be installed now and updates will automatically be installed as it progresses to a stable release later this summer. Google is also asking for help with naming this release on the Android website, although "Namey McNameface" has apparently been disqualified as a potential option already.We've come to expect a new Android release alongside the annual I/O conference, but what's inside? For developers, there's three big announcements: a new JIT compiler, Vulkan support, and an updated version of Android Studio, now on version 2.2. The new JIT compiler is supposed to improve ...Read more...

When we reviewed Nvidia's Shield Android TV last September, we found a lot to like, but we didn't quite find the console-killer we were hoping for. At Google's I/O developer conference, Nvidia announced some upcoming apps, games and features that could make the company's set-top box more attractive. ...Read more...

Google has some new hardware out, and no, it's not a Nexus device. The search giant makes extensive use of machine learning to power services like RankBrain and Street View, and it felt it could give those tasks a little more oomph. Enter the Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU for short. ...Read more...

The first round of reviews are in, and it looks like the GeForce GTX 1080 really has taken the single-GPU graphics performance crown—at least for now. But there's still a lot of variables to consider when buying a shiny new card, and not everyone is looking for the biggest and fastest thing around. Although we haven't seen any hard numbers, the less-expensive GeForce GTX 1070 may have some serious price-to-performance promise for enthusiasts. We're hearing rumors that AMD's new Polaris GPU will rise above the horizon in the next few weeks, too. There's even the option to stick with what you have if a new card isn't in the, well, cards right now.With all these new and upcoming options, the choice to upgrade to a GeForce GTX 1080 is largely a personal one right now, so we figured we'd put the question ...Read more...

The next version of Google's Android will make mobile VR a more standard experience. At its Google I/O event today, the company introduced a mobile VR platform it's calling Daydream. This platform includes some operating-system-level improvements that are meant to minimize motion-to-photon latency in VR experiences, as well as a reference headset and controller design that'll presumably give hardware companies a turn-key solution for making their own VR goggles. ...Read more...

ARM Holdings' first ARM v8 test chip based on TSMC's 10FinFET process technology has passed validation. For the SoC arena, this is exciting news as the validation news also brings with it the IP building blocks, EDA (CAD) tools, design flow and methodology needed for customers to harness TSMC's next-generation process tech.ARM provided some members of the press with details of the "Artemis" test chip. The slides depict a simplified SoC comprising an "Artemis" quad-core CPU and a Mali GPU. The Artemis CPU uses an as-yet-unnanounced architecture, while the Mali GPU only has a single shader. The simplified SoC features balance chip ...Read more...

Lest you think you've wandered into a realm of fantasy, worry not; "Ebonsteel" is just Lian-Li's brand for its first lineup of steel cases. The Taiwanese chassis company has long been known for its catalog of premium aluminum cases, but aluminum isn't cheap, and neither are aluminum computer chassis. By popular demand, Lian-Li is bringing its premium chassis expertise to a more affordable price point. ...Read more...

Microsoft has released an update rollup for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 that it's calling a "convenience rollup." Service Pack 1 was released way back in February of 2011, which means we've seen more than five years of patch Tuesdays come and go since its release. Since this update roll-up includes almost all of the updates Microsoft has released since Service Pack 1 was released, it should simplify new Windows 7 installs. ...Read more...

Virtual desktop infrastructures and virtualized apps are becoming common in today's businesses as organizations move away from desktop PCs and deliver applications or entire virtualized PCs over the network. Even basic productivity apps like Microsoft Office and the Windows 10 operating system now expect GPU acceleration, though, and Nvidia thinks virtualizing today's software without a GPU accelerator running underneath is a fast track to a sub-optimal user experience. To solve this need for GPU acceleration for everyone, Nvidia is offering system administrators the ability to put up to 64 virtual users on a single shared graphics card with the new Tesla M10. ...Read more...

Every quarter, Backblaze releases a report that accounts for the thousands of hard drives it uses in its proprietary Storage Pod enclosures, and the failure rates it calculates for those drives. Each Storage Pod contains as many as 60 3.5" drives in four units of rack space. The company's report for this quarter came out today, and it's full of juicy data. ...Read more...

The Moto G has long been regarded as one of the best mid-range phones out there for a while now. Motorola is looking to capitalize on that fame by refreshing the Moto G family with a new "G4" version and adding a couple more members, as well: the slightly upmarket Moto G4 Plus and the presumably affordable Moto G4 Play.

Ever since Nvidia’s announcement of its 10-series graphics cards with Pascal GPUs onboard, the internet has been abuzz about the potential performance of the GeForce GTX 1080. Today, we got a look at the first independent performance numbers from the new card, but we still didn’t know much about the 1080’s little brother, the GeForce GTX 1070—at least, until now. PCWorld says it confirmed official specifications for the new card with Nvidia after a series of leaks.The specs PCWorld is reporting for the GTX 1070 pretty much align with our expectations for a cut-down version of the GTX ...Read more...

EVGA is hot on MSI's heels with a refreshed X99 board of its own that's presumably ready for the upcoming Broadwell-E launch. The company's newest board, the X99 FTW K, is a an update of the previous X99 FTW. Like its predecessor, the X99 FTW K purports to be a high-end, E-ATX board for serious overclockers, but the K version has picked up a few new tricks. ...Read more...

Portal Stories: Mel is one of the best gaming values in years. It's a completely free stand-alone mod based on Portal 2, so if you like Portal and you haven't played it, you should go do that now. The creator, Prism Studios, has just released its second Portal fan-game, called Portal Stories: VR. This new release features 10 puzzles that are designed from the ground up as a room-scale VR experience for the HTC Vive. Portal Stories: VR appears to be the first game that takes players into Aperture's test chambers, and it's also the first community mod on Steam with official VR support. Valve's Robot Repair VR demo and The Lab as a whole are both set in the Portal universe, too, but neither game technically puts the player to work in the all-important job of testing. ...Read more...

Morning, folks. As you may have already seen elsewhere on the web, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 review embargo lifted this morning. To get the bad news out of the way first, we won't be publishing our usual in-depth review today. With that said, we do have a GTX 1080 in our labs now, and we'll be working around the clock to get the card tested and dissected as soon as we can. Given the results we're seeing from other sites, the numbers should be well worth the wait. In the meantime, here's the GTX 1080 Founders Edition card in the flesh: ...Read more...

Earlier this year, Google announced that it would no longer accept Flash-based ads for its AdWords and DoubleClick services. By the end of 2016, Google intends to change how its Chrome browser supports Flash content on websites, effectively phasing out the plugin in most instances.The company prefers HTML5 content over Flash for security reasons, faster load times, and lower power consumption, so the company plans to have Chrome use HTML5 by default wherever the option is available. Many sites still use Flash, though, so Chrome ...Read more...

Eight is Enough

Oculus' Rift and HTC's Vive VR headsets have been in the wild for some time now. We're still poking and prodding that next-generation technology to see what it's all about, and one of the ways we figured we'd do it is to put together a brand-new PC—something many seasoned and newbie system builders alike are probably doing in preparation for the arrival of their headset pre-orders. MSI and Corsair were more than happy to help, and they stepped up to the plate with a ton of neat hardware that's more than up to the task of powering VR content. Behold: ...Read more...

Looks like today is Apple Patch Monday. Cupertino has released a bevy of fixes for its two main operating systems, bringing iOS to version 9.3.2 and OS X El Capitan to version 10.11.5. At first glance, neither update brings much in the way of user-visible changes, but there are still a few interesting points to look at. ...Read more...

After OCZ declared bankruptcy in 2013, Toshiba purchased the company and gave it a new lease on life. OCZ continued to produce a full line of SSDs under its new management, including SATA and NVMe drives for the consumer and enterprise markets. Today, however, Toshiba appears to be retiring the OCZ name on all but a few of its consumer SSDs. ...Read more...

We've just noticed that AMD updated its website with a new line-up of laptop Radeon GPUs, the Radeon M400 series. The company hasn't made an official announcement about this line-up, but the specifications on their own are enlightening. Let's start with the R9-class parts in this lineup.Those numbers look pretty familiar. The R9 M485X appears to be closely related to a previous high-end mobile Radeon, the R9 M390X. That product used the GCN 1.2-based Amethyst GPU —a clock-limited Tonga—in its most-complete incarnation, and we expect the same for the new product. Meanwhile, the two smaller ...Read more...