Virtually all high-tech companies who sell PC hardware or personal computers recently complained about poor sales of PCs in the past few quarters. While many expect their revenues to improve in the second half of 2015, analysts warn that factors, which negatively affect sales of PCs now, will continue to slow …

Leading online stores in the U.K. and mainland Europe this week began to take pre-orders on the world’s first PC case with USB type-C receptacle on the front panel. The price of the novelty will not be prohibitively high, but the In Win mid-tower 805 is clearly not an affordable …

Advanced Micro Devices is working on two new A8 and A10 accelerated processing units for desktop systems. The new chips will be based on the code-named “Kaveri” design and will not bring tangible performance improvements compared to existing APUs. Nonetheless, the new processors will help AMD to maintain average selling …

It is not a secret that AMD’s upcoming Radeon R9 Nano graphics card will be the most powerful adapter for mini-ITX personal computers ever produced and will have no rivals for quite some time. As it appears, the Radeon R9 Nano will not only offer high performance, but it will actually …

Deepcool, a well-known producer of high-end coolers and computer cases, on Tuesday introduced its new-generation Gamer Storm Lucifer K2 cooler, which supports all microprocessors available today, including the latest Intel Core i7/i5 “Skylake” central processing units in LGA1151 packaging. The Deepcool Gamer Storm Lucifer K2 processor cooler features massive aluminium …

OCZ Storage Solutions, a supplier of solid-state drives controlled by Toshiba Corp., is working on a new high-end SSD for performance enthusiasts. The new RevoDrive 400 uses M.2 form-factor, but fully supports NVMe protocol and has very high performance. The product will compete against workstation-class PCI Express-based SSDs from companies …

SK Hynix, one of the leading manufacturers of NAND flash and the second largest maker of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), plans to spend 31 trillion won ($25.94 billion) to build two semiconductor production facilities in South Korea over the next 10 years. The expansion of production capacities will unlikely …

Although Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is behind Samsung Foundry with its first-generation FinFET fabrication technology, which is why it lost orders from Apple and Qualcomm, it will still produce chips using 16nm FinFET manufacturing process for other major customers, including Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia Corp. Advanced Micro Devices plans …

New types of NAND flash memory will not only help to reduce costs of non-voltatile memory, but will also enable makers to build solid-state drives with unprecedented capacities. Toshiba Corp. believes that SSDs with 128TB capacity will become available commercially already three years from now. In the coming years Toshiba …

Sales of graphics cards for desktop PCs decreased once again in the second quarter of 2015, according to data from Jon Peddie Research. Market share of Advanced Micro Devices also hit a new low during the quarter. Shipments of discrete graphics adapters for desktops dropped to 9.4 million units in …

Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., claims that despite of lack of any announcements concerning its contract semiconductor manufacturing business unit, the latter is growing and is still an important opportunity for the chip giant. Moreover, it has new customers that Intel just cannot name. Intel established its …

Asustek Computer has rolled-out the most sophisticated USB 3.1 type-C upgrade kit to date. The Asus USB 3.1 UPD Panel not only boasts with two USB type-C receptacles, but also supports USB type-C power delivery feature, which allows transferring up to 100W of power using one connector. The kit is …

Intel Corp.’s NUC [next unit of computing] small form-factor PCs offer decent performance and are rather small. Unfortunately, such systems come with limited choice of processors and cannot be upgraded. By contrast, mini-ITX systems support all types of CPUs, can be upgraded, but are considerably larger. In a bid to …

Microsoft Corp. is reportedly gearing up to release its highly-anticipated Surface Pro 4 business tablet next month. The novelty will be based on leading-edge hardware and will naturally use Windows 10 operating system. Moreover, according to a media leak, there will be two versions of the fourth-generation business slate from …

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology is expected to enable hard disk drives with considerably larger capacities compared to HDDs available today. However, the first hard drives featuring HAMR will not offer any breakthroughs since they will largely be designed to evaluate the tech and learn about mass production of such …

In Win Development, a well-known maker of stylish PC chassis, this week introduced its 805 mid-tower, the world’s first enthusiast-class computer case with USB type-C connector on the front panel. The new case is built of high-quality materials and provides rich expansion, cooling and PC configuration capabilities. The In Win …

Samsung Electronics indicated that it plans to start volume production of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) next year at the Intel Developer Forum this week. At the trade-show, the company revealed its current vision and expectations concerning HBM. Samsung foresees that eventually high-performance applications (such as GPUs) could feature up to six …

Seasonic has announced that Dancop, a professional computer tweaker from Germany, and his team Hardwareluxx.de are now ranked as the No.1 overclockers crew in the world at Hwbot, the world’s leading community of PC enthusiasts and overclockers. Dancop, whose real name is Daniel Schier, exclusively uses a high-end Seasonic power …

When Nintendo last year announced intention to release gaming platforms that improve “quality-of-life”, the idea was considered as a way to significantly expand the reach of Nintendo’s gaming devices beyond core and casual gamers. Many believed that it could be the next big thing for the company, whose Wii U …

Intel Corp. this week reaffirmed plans to release the next generation of its multi-core Xeon E5 v4 central processing units code-named “Broadwell-EP”, which were rumoured to be cancelled earlier this year. The new chips will emerge later this year, they will increase core-count, memory bandwidth and will also feature micro-architecture-level improvements. …

In the recent years, Advanced Micro Devices has reduced the amount of new graphics processors it releases per annum, which lead to massive erosion of its market share and revenue. While the company hopes that its latest product lineup will help it to regain some of the lost share and …

Nvidia Corp. on Thursday introduced its second graphics card based on the GM206 graphics processing unit. The GeForce GTX 950 is the lowest-cost second-generation “Maxwell” solution that sports modern feature-set and decent performance in almost all games in full-HD (1920*1080) resolution. Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 is powered by the GM206-250 …

Intel Corp. and Inventec demonstrated external graphics processing solutions featuring Thunderbolt 3 interface at the Intel Developer Forum this week. The devices are based on reference designs and it is unknown when the products could hit the market. Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 interface offers 40Gb/s of bandwidth (about 5GB/s), which is …

Development of DDR4 dynamic random access memory took a long time. However, adoption of the new DRAM will be rather quick. Already next year the majority of servers and personal computers will rely on DDR4. The DDR4 memory standard is currently supported by Intel Corp.’s server platforms as well as …

AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync variable refresh technologies are widely used today by various display makers, greatly improving quality of video and games. Apparently, Intel Corp. would also like to support adaptable refresh and VESA’s Adaptive-Sync is a natural fit for the company. Unfortunately, the company is not sure when …

Since the introduction of its graphics processing units based on the second-generation “Maxwell” architecture in the third quarter of 2014, Nvidia Corp. has been steadily growing its share in the market of discrete graphics cards for desktop computers. In Q2 2015 the company’s share set a record: the company shipped …

G.Skill this week is demonstrating its upcoming DDR4 dual-channel memory kits that can run at clock-rates higher than 4GHz at the Intel Developer Forum. The company intends to start selling such products in the coming months or weeks. G.Skill is working on Trident Z-series 8GB dual-channel DDR4 memory kits that …

When Sony Corp. span off its PC division last year, the new company decided to significantly shrink its product lineup and concentrate solely on the Japanese market. Apparently, Vaio Corp. is planning its return to the international PC market with new high-end models with exclusive capabilities. The company plans to …

The 5GHz frequency milestone for computer memory is yet to be achieved, but professional overclockers are probably not far from hitting it. This week Chi-Kui Lam, a well-known computer tweaker, managed to push a DDR4 memory module from G.Skill to whopping 4.90GHz. Chi-Kui Lam overclocked a 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws 4 …

It was a matter of time before off-the-shelf DDR4 memory managed to hit 4000MHz milestone. At present, only G.Skill offers 4GHz memory modules commercially, but other makers are gearing up to release their kits with unprecedented clock-rate. Corsair is showcasing such modules at the Intel Developer Forum. At the IDF, …