Component

Although solid-state drives are considerably more affordable these days than they were several years ago, high-capacity 1TB SSDs remain pretty expensive and with price-points like £349/$550 out of budget of the vast majority of PC enthusiasts. However, the situation is changing. Mushkin Enhanced, a leading maker of advanced PC components, …

In a bid to maintain market shares and unit shipments this year leading manufacturers of mainboards had to cut prices and initiate various campaigns to boost sales. Such tactics lead to price-cuts as well as erosion of gross-margins, something that threats the future of the companies. However, next year motherboard …

Thanks to the fact that the new-generation graphics cards from Nvidia Corp. arrived to the market and next flagship graphics solutions from both AMD and Nvidia emerged on horizon, current top-of-the-range graphics solutions began to rapidly drop their price. The Radeon R9 295X2 graphics cards are now available at price-points …

Everybody loves speed, and there's no easier way to enhance the snappiness of general usage tasks than by using a solid state drive. But the primary storage interface – SATA 6Gbps – saw its speed limit reached by fast SSD's more than two years ago. If you wanted higher performance, …

We do not know exactly when companies like Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. make their first chips using 7nm, 5nm, 3nm or 2nm process technologies. But we do know what should happen before leading semiconductor producers manufacture their new chips using ultra-thin process technologies: ASML should sell …

A Chinese web-site that leaks unofficial information about future central processing units and graphics processing units has published what it claims to be the first benchmark results of AMD’s next-generation Radeon R9 300-series graphics card code-named “Fiji XT”. If the benchmark results are correct, then the graphics adapters will offer …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has ordered two additional extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography scanners from ASML Holding. The equipment will be delivered in 2015 and will complement initial two EUV scanners TSMC has today, which will be upgraded. Four scanners will let TSMC make chips using 10nm process technology and EUV lithography …

Multiplay's legendary Insomnia events are a great place to get hands-on with a ton of kit that you don't normally find in the shops. On hand for Thermaltake was Martin Pajenkamp to explain the cool features of his Core V51 chassis. Have to say that we do like an intelligently …

At the recent Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (MMM) conference Advanced Storage Technology Consortium (ASTC), which unites numerous makers of hard disk drives as well as developers of storage solutions, demonstrated a new HDD roadmap. Apparently, rapid increases in areal density of hard drive media will allow HDD makers to create …

Advanced Micro Devices traditionally holds its Financial Day for investors and financial analysts in November, just like Intel Corp. However, it will not host the event this year as it is reshaping its roadmap and reconsiders its goals going forward. A spokesperson for AMD has confirmed KitGuru that the company …

Advanced Micro Devices and Asmedia have reportedly signed a pact under which the latter will develop core-logic sets for the former. The move will help AMD to reduce its expenses and use internal engineering resources to develop leading-edge microprocessors and graphics processing units. Earlier this year AMD licensed SATA Express-related …

At some point or another, we've all been tempted to paint a chassis. Whether you botched it with a roller or made your best effort using a primed surface and layers of spray paint, it's unlikely that you will have managed better than this system from Utopia Computers on the …

Small Form Factor fever seemed to spread through the halls at Multiplay's Insomnia i53. We all remember the ‘time of the Shuttles' – around 10 years ago – but the problem was that the specifications were very weak. Now that does not have to be the case. Also, prices have …

Although Advanced Micro Devices has developed several generations of chips for tablet PCs, it has not shipped a lot of them because makers of tablets were not too interested in making slates based on x86 processors and Microsoft Windows operating system. As a result, AMD now believes that chips for tablets are …

Advanced Micro Devices said that architectural peculiarities of the graphics core next (GCN) architecture make it very efficient for rendering virtual reality games. Apparently, asynchronous compute engines (ACEs) of AMD Radeon graphics processing units provide unique capabilities for low-latency VR rendering. “It has been something of a well-kept secret that …

Via Technologies controls about 1 per cent of the world’s x86 microprocessor market and does not have a lot of chances to significantly boost sales of its central processing units. Despite of not very bright perspectives and financial losses, the company does not plan to leave the CPU market. Timothy …

We have been impressed with the wide cross section of GTX970's and GTX980's we have reviewed since Nvidia's official launch. It was interesting to note on launch day that Nvidia didn't sample a reference GTX970, instead relying on partners to supply custom cooled overclocked solutions. Nvidia's distinctive reference cooler has …

Fractal Design has given the Refine R4 a makeover and the result is the Refine R5. If you judge a book by its cover the R5 may not impress you as it looks pretty much identical to the R4 but once you get inside the case you'll find it is …

One of the major problems when buying a gaming laptop is that you are stuck forever with the graphics inside. Within 18 months they are very often struggling to keep up with the latest game engines. MSI is looking to resolve this problem with their upcoming MSI GS30 Shadow Super …

Samsung Electronics on Friday filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission asking to stop sales of Nvidia Corp.’s GeForce graphics processing units as well as Tegra system-on-chips since they infringe its patents. The move is a yet another step in the legal battle between Nvidia and Samsung, which …

SK Hynix, a major maker of high-performance memory, has added high bandwidth memory (HBM) devices compliant with the JESD235 specification into its product catalogue for the fourth quarter of 2014. The addition of chips into the databook means that they are in production and can be obtained from the company. …

SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest makers of dynamic random access memory, has initiated mass production of GDDR5 memory that can operate at 8Gb/s data-rate. The new memory chips are already available for graphics cards manufacturers and will be installed on new graphics adapters. The new GDDR5 memory chips from …

Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of application processors for mobile devices, this week confirmed unofficial information that it is working on high-performance system-on-chips for the emerging market of micro-servers based on ARM-architecture processors. “We are engaged with customers,” said Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm, during a meeting with …

Chaintech Technology and Colorful Technology this week teamed up again to bring back Chaintech-branded mainboards to the market. The first new Chaintech motherboard in years – the iGame Z97 – will sport massive water-block on its sophisticated 16-phase VRM and core-logic components and will be one of a few E-ATX …

At present solid-state drives with extreme capacities are very expensive and even the best of them cannot match high-capacity hard disk drives for nearline storage applications. However, thanks to the evolution of NAND flash memory in general, and 3D vertical NAND (3D V-NAND) in particular, the situation may change soon …

Asus Republic of Gamers has announced that it will be launching the Poseidon GTX 980 graphics card, featuring the DirectCU H2O cooler, which uses a hybrid solution for efficient cooling on air or water. According to the company's own tests, the Poseidon GTX 980 will run up to 27 degrees …

Vince “K|NGP|N” Lucido, a legendary overclocker who works with EVGA, has managed to overclock a GeForce GTX 980-based graphics card to record-high 2.20GHz/9GHz (GPU/memory) clock-rates and break a couple of world’s records in 3DMark FireStrike benchmark once again. In a bid to prove his world-class skills in overclocking, K|NGP|N pushed …

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday formally announced its code-named “Carrizo” and “Carrizo-L” accelerated processing units (APUs) that integrate the company’s next-generation general-purpose and graphics processing units. The new chips will arrive in the first half of next year and will target similar-class devices, including notebooks, 2-in-1s, all-in-one desktops and some …

Samsung Electronics and Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday revealed that the former will release its first displays featuring AMD’s FreeSync technology in March, 2015. Initially there will be five monitors from Samsung that will take advantage of AMD’s screen synching technology, but eventually a lot of Samsung’s displays will support AMD’s FreeSync. …

Thecus, the Taiwanese NAS company, gathered a group of hacks in Berlin, Germany to announce three new models. These are the W2000, W4000 and W5000 – with the W standing for Windows. In this instance we're talking about Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 Essentials so this is a series of …