Last summer Phanteks won our hearts with the Enthoo Primo aluminium case – which claimed a ‘Must Have' award despite a price tag of £199.99. This success led to a huge amount of anticipation for the upcoming Phanteks Enthoo Pro as we were promised a case that carried over the …
Read More »SanDisk unveils its first fully-encrypted solid-state drives
SanDisk Corp. on Tuesday announced its first family of solid-state drives that support all the certified encryption technologies. The new drives are designed for corporate laptops, so expect to see them in the upcoming Lenovo ThinkPads and HP EliteBooks. The drives will be made in 2.5”/7mm and M.2 versions. The …
Read More »Intel officially rolls-out Z97 and H97 chipsets
Intel Corp. has officially unveiled its latest core-logic sets for desktop computers, the Z97 and H97. The new chips support all existing microprocessors in LGA1150 packaging that belong to the Haswell and Haswell Refresh families as well as the upcoming code-named Broadwell central processing units. The fresh platforms do not …
Read More »YOYOTech launches Warbird Z7
As you'd expect, with the advent of a new Intel chipset, every major computer brand is pushing through new ranges of systems that promise to be better, faster and more feature-rich than anything you've seen before. KitGuru casts an eye over the interwibble and picks out one such newbie. We …
Read More »Samsung begins to mass produce 3D V-NAND flash in China
Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s top makers of NAND flash memory, last week announced that its new memory fab in Xi’an China has begun full-scale manufacturing operations. The new facility will produce Samsung’s advanced NAND flash memory chips, such as 3D V-NAND. Vertical NAND (V-NAND) memory stacks memory cells …
Read More »Intel finalizes specs of Core i “Devil’s Canyon” chips
A Chinese web-site has revealed the final specifications of Intel Corp.’s Core i-series “Devil’s Canyon” microprocessors that promise to offer better overclockability than existing chips based on the Haswell micro-architecture. As it appears, in addition to higher overclocking potential, the new flagship LGA1150 chip will offer very high performance out-of-the-box …
Read More »VESA adds Adaptive Sync technology to DisplayPort standard
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) on Monday announced that the future implementations of the DisplayPort 1.2a standards will feature Adaptive Sync technology that is supposed to synchronize refresh rates of displays with actual frame-rate that is displayed. The feature will make games and video run much smoother than currently. …
Read More »Kingston M.2 Sata SSD: a quick look at engineering sample
Intel's 9-series chipset has launched and one of the most interesting features that it delivers is native support for M.2 SSDs. Devices using the M.2 (formerly NGFF) connector can differ in their connection to the chipset. Two common approaches used today are the M.2 PCIe variant, which uses PCIe connections, …
Read More »MSI Z97 Gaming 5 Motherboard Review
Gamers have long been one of the core consumer groups for the DIY computing industry, but recent months have seen the popularity of gaming-branded components hit a new level. Motherboards are a great example of this; in the eleven months since the inception of Intel's Z87 chipset, the number of …
Read More »Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 Motherboard Review
Intel's Z97 chipset has launched and TUF series motherboards are part of the Asus welcoming party. Sporting the new Intel chipset and old TUF features that have made previous generation Sabertooth boards lucrative components, we put Asus' Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 in the firing line of our critical analysis. Do …
Read More »Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK Black Edition Motherboard Review
Intel's Z97 chipset has arrived, bringing with it a handful of new features, including native support for PCIe-based storage. Motherboard manufacturers have been busy working on their boards based on the 9-series chipset. As of May 11th, the LGA 1150 socket motherboards with Z97 and H97 chipsets are available to purchase. We …
Read More »TSMC extends 28nm chip lead time to 16 weeks, puts chip designers at risk
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has extended lead time for production of chips using 28nm process technology from ten to 16 weeks recently, a media report reads. The company reportedly claimed that the demand for 28nm manufacturing process is very high and therefore orders placed in May would take more time …
Read More »Nvidia vows to make GeForce GTX Titan Z available in coming months
Nvidia Corp. late on Thursday made the first official comment regarding availability of its dual-GPU flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX Titan Z. The company reassured its investors and financial analysts that the product would be available in the second quarter of its fiscal year, but did not provide any …
Read More »Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan Z makes no show, delayed indefinitely
A week ago it was reported that Nvidia Corp. and its partners would finally release its new dual-chip flagship graphics card – GeForce GTX Titan Z – on the 8th of May. As it appears, no store in the world started to sell the most expensive consumer graphics board ever …
Read More »HGST to demo Ethernet HDD/SSD architecture at upcoming summit
HGST, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., said this week that it would demonstrate a new open Ethernet drive architecture offering new flexibility and capabilities for developers and operators of OpenStack cloud software. The completely new storage hardware architecture will allow to expand datacenters easier than today. The open …
Read More »BitFenix Comrade Chassis Review in Black
Not everyone has a lot of money to buy the most expensive components. With this in mind the folks at BitFenix have taken a look at the needs of users on a budget and created the BitFenix Comrade in black. KitGuru examines the case for low cost chassis. Unashamedly aimed …
Read More »MSI break Z97 silence with upcoming motherboard deals
While their competitors have been very actively promoting upcoming motherboards, MSI have been keeping really quiet about what they have planned for the coming weeks. When companies like MSI go quiet, we always wonder what they have up their sleeve. Well we have some news from the MSI camp which …
Read More »Sapphire quietly starts to sell Radeon R9 290X 8GB graphics cards
Sapphire Technology has quietly started to sell the most powerful single-chip graphics card based on AMD Radeon R9 290X graphics processing unit, the Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Vapor-X. The graphics board is exclusively available from Overclockers.co.uk now, but over time it can reach different stores as well. The Sapphire Radeon …
Read More »Nvidia teams up with PC makers for GeForce GTX-branded SFF PCs
Nvidia Corp. on Wednesday said that it had teamed up with BitFenix, Overclockers.co.uk and PC Specialist for special edition small form-factor GeForce GTX-branded systems. The personal computers will come in BitFenix Phenom chassis with GeForce GTX “Claw” symbol and will mix high performance in games with small footprint. The GeForce …
Read More »Intel bets on Chromebooks, announces family of new chips
At present personal computers based on Google ChromeOS represent less than one per cent of all systems on the market. While the researchers forecast that eventually sales of such PCs will grow, they will still remain a small fraction of the global PC market. Nonetheless, it looks like Intel Corp. …
Read More »Intel’s Broadwell processors to receive a graphics core upgrade
Although it has long been expected that the code-named Broadwell family of microprocessors from Intel Corp. would feature an improved graphics processing unit, it looks like the upgrade may be more significant than previously thought. Apparently, the new graphics and multimedia engine would not only feature higher performance, but also …
Read More »Intel Skylake PC platform: quad-core CPUs, new graphics, new chipsets
As previously reported, despite of the delay of the code-named Broadwell lineup of central processing units, Intel Corp.’s code-named Skylake chips are on-track to be introduced in 2015. Since preparations for introduction of the new platform are already underway in south-east Asia, the first leaks about the Skylake and systems …
Read More »Asus Essence STX II 7.1 Sound Card / Headphone Amplifier Review
If you use your rig to listen to music then there is a good chance you won't be happy with the onboard sound from the motherboard. ASUS have released the STX II and STX II 7.1 to build on the huge success they experienced from the earlier Essence STX solution. …
Read More »Phanteks launch Enthoo Pro Chassis
One of the more unusually named items in the history of computing, there's no denying that the Phanteks products we've seen so far DESERVE to stand out. With today's launch of the latest version, KitGuru wonders if this specialist engineering and design company can pull it off again? Not only …
Read More »AMD to roll-out all-new high-performance x86 micro-architecture in 2015
Advanced Micro Devices is reportedly developing a brand-new next-generation high-performance x86 micro-architecture that it plans to unveil sometimes in late 2015. The new architecture will not be derived from the Bulldozer technology that powers AMD processing units today and may change AMD’s competitive positions on the market. Two the key …
Read More »Cooler Master V1200 Platinum Power Supply Review
2014 has been an incredible year for top grade, high wattage power supplies. We have reviewed the Super Flower Leadex Platinum 1,000w, The Antec High Current Pro Platinum 1,300w and the Corsair AX1500i Titanium – all of which have claimed top awards. Today we look at the latest Cooler Master …
Read More »Nvidia already testing GM204-based graphics cards internally
Although not a lot of people outside of Nvidia Corp. know exactly what the code-named GM204 graphics processor unit is and when it is supposed to hit the market, it looks like there is one thing that we can be sure about: internal testing of the new graphics solution has …
Read More »AMD unveils new roadmap, plans to offer pin-compatible x86 and ARM chips
Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced details concerning its longer-term roadmap. The firm disclosed plans to develop its own ARMv8 core implementations as well as pin-compatible microprocessors and accelerated processing units based on ARM and x86 architecture. But while the company unveiled a clear and logical strategy regarding low-power and …
Read More »SanDisk to release 8TB SSD in 2015, 16TB SSD a year after
Many modern storage sub-systems – both client and server – use solid-state drives to store frequently accessed data and programs and hard disk drives to keep large amounts of data that require a lot of storage space, but is not used often. Basically, storage sub-systems enjoy the best of both …
Read More »Nvidia ships Tegra K1. This time only to software developers
Nvidia Corp. on Thursday said that it had started volume shipments of its Jetson TK1 development kits, which are based on the company’s highly-anticipated Tegra K1 system-on-chip with four ARM Cortex-A15 cores, Nvidia Kepler-based graphics and a variety of other hardware. The development kit is aimed at designers of software …
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