Although Intel Corp.’s upcoming Core i7-6700K “Skylake-S” chip will likely become overclockers’ new darling, it looks like it will have the same drawback as currently available mainstream microprocessors with unlocked multiplier: inefficient internal thermal interface. As reported, Intel Corp. started to ship production ready full-speed engineering samples of its next-generation …
Read More »Zotac quietly enters the SSD market
Zotac, a leading maker of graphics cards that belongs to PCPartner, has been gradually expanding its business for several years now. In addition to Nvidia GeForce-based graphics adapters, the company also offers mainboards, tablets as well as small form-factor PCs. This week the company quietly started to sell solid-state drives under …
Read More »Seagate unveils world’s first 2.5-inch 4TB HDD with 800GB platters
Seagate Technology on Wednesday introduced Samsung Spinpoint M10P hard disk drive, which features 4TB capacity and 2.5”/15mm form-factor. The drive will initially be used inside the company’s external HDD products, but HDDs based on the same leading-edge platters will address other applications eventually. Seagate, which acquired hard disk drive manufacturing …
Read More »Exclusive interview with Peter Jankowski from Arctic
The Arctic Freezer series is arguably the most famous ‘first cooler' in the market. Over the past 14 years, the company has maintained focus on low noise, low cost and low temperatures. More recently, it's had a tendency to diversify into everything from remote control helicopters to rechargeable batteries and …
Read More »G.Skill’s DDR4 memory hits 4.43GHz clock-rate
G.Skill this week announced that an overclocker has managed to push its 4GB DDR4 memory module to 4.43GHz, a new world record for this memory type. The overclocker used current-generation high-end desktop platform, so it is possible to expect that later this year this record will be beaten. Nick Shih, …
Read More »Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming Review
Nvidia's GTX980 Ti has stormed the performance benchmarks in the last couple of weeks and now modified, partner cards are hitting retail. We have already looked at the excellent EVGA model last week, and today we analyse the new Gigabyte G1 Gaming version which features a beautiful new cooler with …
Read More »SK Hynix confirms mass production of first-gen HBM memory
SK Hynix, one of the world’s major producers of memory, on Tuesday said that it had begun volume shipments of its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) designed for bandwidth-demanding applications. The first products to use HBM will be AMD’s Radeon R9 Fury-series graphics cards, but eventually other devices will utilize the new …
Read More »Dual-GPU flagship AMD Radeon R9 Fury X2 graphics card pictured
Even though AMD’s new-generation dual-chip flagship graphics card is only expected to hit the market several months from now, the company already uses such graphics card for demonstrations. The new add-in board does not resemble current-gen dual-chip graphics adapters. The upcoming dual-chip AMD Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card – which may …
Read More »AMD unveils project Quantum: Ultra-small PC with extreme performance
Small form-factor personal computers have gained significant popularity in the recent years. A lot of people want to have tiny PCs that can perform everyday tasks without overheating or causing too much noise. Back in 2012, Intel Corp. introduced NUC [next-unit of computing] PCs that can deliver enough performance for …
Read More »AMD officially reveals R9 300-series and Fury GPUs
AMD has finally stopped teasing everyone and has announced its new graphics card lineup for 2015. The expected R7 and R9 300 series graphics cards made an appearance but AMD also has four Fiji powered graphics cards up its sleeve all with HBM memory on-board, which is more than we …
Read More »ASRock USB 3.1: A Quick Hands-on Test
We had a chance to take a look at ASRock's USB 3.1 implementation with the company's excellent X99E-ITX/ac motherboard and a custom USB 3.1 RAID testing card. How does ASRock's 10Gbps USB 3.1 solution fare? USB 3.1 has been a huge talking point for the past few months. We have …
Read More »Gigabyte X99-Gaming 5P Motherboard Review
Retrofitted with Gigabytes new pin-enhanced socket, the X99-Gaming 5P is targeting enthusiast gamers with an eye for multi-GPU configurations and an ear for high-quality audio hardware. Can the red and black-themed design appeal to gamers shopping for a mid-priced X99 motherboard? Branded as part of the G1 Gaming series, Gigabyte's …
Read More »Plextor readies cost-efficient SSD based on TLC NAND memory
Plextor produces one of the best solid-state drives available today. However, Plextor’s drives are pretty expensive and are designed for premium market segment. Apparently, Plextor is working on an inexpensive SSD based on cost-effective triple-level-cell NAND flash memory, which will be available later this year. Not a lot is known …
Read More »AMD’s 2016 APUs to be powered by ‘Excavator’ x86 cores – slides
Advanced Micro Devices will not use its next-generation high-performance “Zen” micro-architecture for its accelerated processing units next year, if excerpts from an alleged AMD presentation published by a web-site are to be believed. While the slides reveal AMD’s intentions, they do not answer all the questions about the forthcoming chip. …
Read More »Samsung putting pressure on DRAM prices – analyst
Some market observers believe that prices of dynamic random access memory are about to increase, which will significantly improve profitability of DRAM producers. While this is essentially correct, there are reports that Samsung Electronics is dropping prices of memory in a bid to boost revenues, which could hurt other manufacturers' …
Read More »Taiyo Yuden, major maker of recordable optical discs, exits the market
Taiyo Yuden may not be a familiar name outside of Japan, but it is one of the world’s largest makers of optical recording media. Rebranded Taiyo Yuden products can be found under Fujifilm, Maxell, Panasonic, Plextor, TDK, Verbatim and other brands. This week the company announced that it will cease …
Read More »AMD set to release first ‘Zen’-based microprocessors in late 2016 – document
While Advanced Micro Devices’ next-generation micro-architecture known as “Zen” looks very impressive on paper, it will not hit the market any time soon. In fact, AMD plans to release the first microprocessors featuring the new cores only in late 2016, according to a document published by a web-site. AMD’s first …
Read More »AMD Fiji, HBM and product ‘rebadging’
It has been some time since AMD were able to punch Intel on the chin at product launch — and this year Nvidia have been left to dominate the graphics industry. Their Nvidia's GTX980, GTX980 Ti and Titan X simply have no competition whatever way you look at it. The …
Read More »Antec Signature S10 unboxing and first look
Today our man Leo takes a first look at the monster S10 case from Antec. This new flagship model firmly targets the high end enthusiast audience with a retail price set at £399.95 inc vat in the UK. • Innovative Air Intake The unique Center Air Intake runs from alongside …
Read More »Exclusive Aerocool interview with Tom Naughton from AOne
Without doubt, Aerocool has been one of the better success stories over the past few years. From being a company best known for entry level ‘piano black finish' cases and front panels for controlling fan speeds, they have now established themselves as a creator of chassis that really stand out from …
Read More »AMD’s ‘Zen’ may enable company to be a viable competitor to Intel – analyst
Advanced Micro Devices has not updated its server and high-end desktop microprocessors for well over two years now, which is why market shares of AMD Opteron and AMD FX central processing units are negligible. However, a lot may change next year, when AMD roll-out its next-generation CPUs based on its …
Read More »AMD Radeon Fury X poses for camera once again
Although Advanced Micro Devices and some of its allies have published a number of teaser photos of AMD’s upcoming Radeon Fury X graphics cards, they have not revealed the actual look of the boards. Fortunately, a Chinese web-site has managed to picture the whole adapter and thus reveal its design. As …
Read More »Xilinx may take over AMD after buyout of Altera by Intel – analyst
Many analysts now believe that Advanced Micro Devices may never recover from its current problems and will inevitably sink. While everything may happen in this industry, it is unlikely that companies of AMD’s size can vanish into oblivion. An analyst believes that Xilinx, a maker of field-programmable gate arrays, may …
Read More »Noctua continues to refine its fans and coolers this year
This year, Noctua is concentrating on refining its existing line up of excellent fans and CPU air coolers. At Computex last week, the company showed off its new 120mm A series fan, which uses a new blade design in order to deliver performance that lands somewhere in-between the F12 and …
Read More »EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+
A couple of weeks ago we reviewed the latest Nvidia GTX980Ti reference card, and today we follow up with a look at the latest flagship model from one of their key partners. The ‘EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+' is quite the mouthful, but EVGA have earned a …
Read More »Futuremark develops benchmark for VR hardware, workloads
Futuremark has this week announced that it had begun development of the world’s first comprehensive suite to measure performance of workloads associated with virtual reality. The new benchmark will test performance of personal computers as well as VR headsets. VRMark is expected to be released this year and currently Futuremark …
Read More »ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini-ITX Motherboard Review
The push for small yet powerful computers has been evident over the past few years. Many enthusiasts are no longer happy with an ATX motherboard and full tower chassis to house their single graphics card and pair of storage drives. Instead, budding aficionados are challenging themselves to create smaller and …
Read More »AMD to offer USB 3.1 controller under its own brand
At present, only MicroStar International offers platforms for AMD processors with USB 3.1 type-A connectors. By contrast, virtually all leading makers of motherboards now sell mainboards for current-generation Intel processors with the new bus. Apparently, Advanced Micro Devices wants to change that. In a bid to catch up with Intel …
Read More »Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan X gets more affordable in the U.K.
Nvidia Corp.’s latest ultra-high-end graphics cards offer unbeatable performance and do not really have direct rivals. Unfortunately, when it comes to prices, not everything looks truly good, especially in Europe. Fortunately, stores like Overclockers UK and their partners this week offer substantial discounts on Nvidia’s flagship product. The suggested retail …
Read More »Intel preps ‘Apollo Lake’ CPUs with ‘Goldmont’ cores, Gen9 graphics
Intel Corp. is working on its next-generation low-cost microprocessors for desktop and laptop computers. Code-named “Apollo Lake”, the new central processing units will be based on a new micro-architecture and will feature an all-new graphics processing unit. Intel’s upcoming “Apollo Lake” processors will be powered by the company’s next-generation micro-architecture …
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