PCIe SSDs offer plenty of advantages in terms of speed and storage over traditional SATA offerings. However, they can look a little out-of-place if you've spent a lot of time and effort in to a custom water cooling loop for your system. Now, those PCIe based SSDs can fit right …
Read More »ASUS shows off ROG Maximus VIII Impact Z170 ITX motherboard
ASUS has just showed off its latest motherboard, the mini-ITX ROG Maximus VIII Impact, bringing the benefits of Intel's latest platform to small, compact rigs. With a new platform, comes new benefits, including 5-way optimization, Pro Clock technology and a full-scale voltage regulator module for those that like to squeeze …
Read More »Judge rules Qualcomm and Samsung not at fault in Nvidia case
Nvidia has suffered a major blow to its patent infringement campaign against tech giants Samsung and Qualcomm, after in a preliminary hearing it was ruled that neither company had used two particular pieces of Nvidia technology without permission. While it received a glimmer of hope when a third patent was …
Read More »Qualcomm sampling 24-core ARM processor for servers
Qualcomm has started to sample a new 24-core ARM processor aimed for use in servers and data centres, the company has revealed. The new chip in question is a pre-production system on chip (SoC) based on the ARMv8-A instruction set, which will be purposed for tackling common data centre workloads and …
Read More »Ark DirectX 12 update delayed indefinitely, needs GPU drivers to mature
Ark: Survival Evolved was set to be one of the first popular titles to support DirectX 12 this year following the release of Windows 10 back in July. The highly anticipated DirectX 12 update was originally set to release back in August, before being delayed in order to wait for …
Read More »Nvidia might phase out 2GB GTX 960 in favour of 4GB version
This week the rumour mill is churning out some news about Nvidia's budget friendly GTX 960 graphics card. According to an add-in board partner source, Nvidia wants to reduce product supply of the 2GB GTX 960 and eventually only offer a 4GB version. This move could potentially put the GTX 960 …
Read More »Researchers show off on-die microfluidic CPU liquid cooling
CPU watercooling has become fairly simple over the years, these days you don't even need to throw together a custom loop, as we have plenty of decent all-in-one units around. So what's the next step? Well some researchers working at Georgia Tech University have come up with something a little …
Read More »MSI GTX 980 Ti Lightning 6GB Review
In the high end MSI have earned a reputation over the years for creating some of the finest video cards known to man. Today we take a look at one of their latest flagship offerings – the GTX 980 TI Lightning. This card ships with a beautiful triple fan cooler …
Read More »Microsoft’s Surface Book laptop has a custom Maxwell GPU
Microsoft's Surface Book was one of the more surprising announcements of the Surface Pro 4 event held earlier this week, as right after Microsoft hailed its new two-in-one as the ultimate laptop replacement, it announced a ‘laptop' that could also operate as a tablet. Still, it's not just interesting because …
Read More »Corsair posts benchmarks for upcoming MSI Seahawk watercooled GPU
Corsair and MSI recently revealed that they would be teaming up to launch the GTX 980Ti Seahawk edition, featuring an all-in-one liquid cooler for better temperatures, quieter operation and a higher out of the box overclock. Now potential buyers can get a look at what that extra performance will get …
Read More »SanDisk and Toshiba could be bought by government owned Tsinghua Unigroup
It looks like SanDisk and Toshiba could both be targets of a take over by the Chinese state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup, according to industry sources. SanDisk and Toshiba currently jointly create NAND flash technology, though each company currently sits on shaky ground as far as financials are concerned. In addition to …
Read More »Samsung’s own mobile GPU coming in 2017/2018
It has been reported in the past that Samsung is working on its own graphics chip for smart devices and now it looks like we may finally see it in 2017/2018. Current reports claim that Samsung wants to unite its well-performing Exynos CPUs with its own graphics unit in order to …
Read More »SK hynix Canvas SL301 500GB SSD Review
SK Hynix have been actively targeting the SSD market in 2015 and their new models hit our labs in recent weeks. Their new SL301 Canvas Solid State Drive is built on the 16nm process and promises very high levels of overall performance. This triple level cell solid state drive will …
Read More »EVGA offers free GPU shroud to HYBRID card owners
If you happened to pick up one of EVGA's Titan X, GTX 980Ti or GTX 980 HYBRID graphics cards, then we have some good news for you. Owners of those cards can claim a brand new GPU shroud, updating the look of their card, complete with a nice new LED. …
Read More »Gamerstorm Captain 240 Review
Deepcool is trying something different with its range of GamerStorm Captain All in One liquid coolers. The sizes are conventional (120mm, 240mm and 360mm) however the styling is quite distinct from the usual Asetek hardware we see employed by the likes of Corsair, NZXT and Thermaltake. According to Deepcool the …
Read More »be quiet! Silent Base 600 (Windowed) Review
be quiet! began its foray into the case market with the high end Silent Base 800 and now it is tackling the mid-range with the Silent Base 600. The 600 uses an ATX form factor, just like the 800, and launches in two versions. There is a regular model with …
Read More »AMD’s dual-GPU Radeon R9 Fury X2 ‘Gemini’ adapter spotted in India
Advanced Micro Devices has begun to test its upcoming dual-chip graphics card internally. The company shipped six samples of its dual-GPU Radeon graphics adapters to India, which means that the company is developing drivers for the solution. According to Zauba.com database, which monitors imports and exports to and from India, …
Read More »AMD begins to sell DDR4 memory modules for Intel and next-gen platforms
Advanced Micro Devices has started to sell Radeon DDR4 memory modules. The new DIMMs are not compatible with AMD’s existing platforms, but can work with Intel Corp.’s central processing units as well as AMD’s upcoming chips due in 2016. AMD Radeon R7 DDR4 memory modules are available in dual-channel 8GB …
Read More »Nvidia Tesla is dominating the market of HPC accelerators
High-performance computing is a market that adopts the latest and greatest technologies very quickly. Leading-edge supercomputers usually utilize the latest microprocessors, compute accelerators, high-end NAND flash-based storage from various vendors. The vast majority of modern HPC systems are based on Intel Xeon processors, however, when it comes to compute accelerators, …
Read More »Micron Technology acquires Tidal Systems, gets SSD controllers
Micron Technology on Friday acquired Tidal Systems, a promising startup, which develops controllers for solid-state drives. With the acquisition of Tidal Systems, Micron will no longer have to rely on SSD system-on-chips developed by other companies. Besides, it will be able to tailor controllers for its memory, something that is …
Read More »Intel alters design of ‘Skylake’ processors to enhance security
Intel Corp. has announced that starting from late October it will ship new processors based on the “Skylake” micro-architecture with enabled Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology. The new central processing units will feature new S-Spec and MM numbers, but will continue to use the same physical dies as existing CPUs. …
Read More »Xilinx starts to ship 16nm FinFET+ chip ahead of schedule
Xilinx, a leading maker of programmable gate arrays as well as special-purpose system-on-chip solutions, this week said that it had made the first customer shipment of its Zynq UltraScale+ processing solution. The chip is made using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s second-generation 16nm FinFET process technology (CLN16FF+) with increased performance and …
Read More »Micron to start sales of SSDs based on TLC NAND this quarter
Micron Technology plans to finally start shipments of consumer solid-state drives based on triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash in the ongoing quarter, the company revealed this week. SSDs featuring TLC NAND memory will be generally more affordable than non-volatile storage solutions powered by multi-level cell (MLC) flash. “We will begin shipping …
Read More »Prices of DDR3 and DDR4 continue to drop, set to decline further
Contract prices of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) modules dropped in August and September, despite peak season and anticipated stock-up demand on China, according to DRAMeXchange. Analysts believe that the launch of Microsoft Windows 10 this summer did not catalyse rise of demand, whereas the free Windows 10 upgrade program …
Read More »AMD releases new beta driver, fixes memory leak issues
AMD has pushed out its latest Catalyst beta driver, fixing a severe memory issue that popped up with the last release. We had a few readers get in touch with us over memory leak issues, causing crashes in DirectX 11 titles with R9-series GPUs. Some of you weren't too happy …
Read More »PNY GTX 950 2GB Review
So far we have looked at GTX950 partner cards from Gigabyte and ASUS and today we continue our coverage with an analysis of the new PNY GTX950. While other GTX950 solutions so far have incorporated dual fans inside the cooling shroud, PNY have opted for just a single fan. The …
Read More »MSI rolls-out limited edition GeForce GTX 980 Ti with copper cooler
MicroStar International has introduced its limited edition GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G Golden graphics card, which features a unique design, can work in three modes and comes with an all-copper cooling systems. The MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G Golden graphics adapter is powered by Nvidia Corp.’s GM200-310 …
Read More »AMD cuts headcount by 5%, reorganizes certain operations
Advanced Micro Devices late on Thursday said that it would cut-down its workforce by another five per cent in a bid to reduce its costs. The company said that it would considerably restructure its internal IT operations; consolidate real-estate facilities; re-organize its enterprise, embedded & semi-custom (EESC) business unit and appoint …
Read More »Samsung: NAND flash industry will triple output to 253EB by 2020
Samsung Electronics predicts that the NAND flash industry will triple output of non-volatile memory over the next five years and will produce whopping 253 exabytes of NAND in 2020. Although the increase is impressive, total output of flash memory will account for less than 10 per cent of storage capacity …
Read More »Intel ‘Cannonlake-E/EP’ for desktops and servers to sport up to 8 cores
Even though Intel Corp. has been gradually increasing the number of general-purpose processing engines inside its microprocessors for servers, the company’s high-end chips for client PCs feature no more than eight x86 cores, whereas mainstream central processing units sport up to four cores. Apparently, Intel has no plans to change …
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