Intel's policy on CPU pricing has been a strong, definite one for years: no price reductions. Faced with less than admirable competition from a struggling AMD back in its Phenom and especially Bulldozer days, Intel enforced a heavy hand on the market and on CPU pricing. However, a much revitalized AMD and difficulties in the transition to the 10 nm process have left Intel with no other recourse than to cut pricing on its CPUs in order to remain competitive. No uptake of new I/O technologies such as PCIe 4.0 has also taken its toll on AMD's position in the server and HEDT market, which has led to recent price-cuts and tightening of Intel's Xeon line of CPUs and price-cuts in the order of 50% in their Cascade Lake-X processors compared to the previous generation. DigiTimes, citing industry PC makers, says that Intel is gearing up to keep fighting in the only front it actually can, besides puny core count increases on their heavily-iterated Skylake architecture - pricing. This move comes in a bid to keep its market dominance, which Intel themselves have before said - after Zen 2, that is - isn't a priority for the consumer market. You can rest assured that Intel is very, very likely already practicing hefty price reductions for tray-quantity purchases for partners. However, it seems that the company might bring some price cuts on to its upcoming Comet Lake CPUs. The company has always been loathe to reduce pricing on existing inventory, rather choosing to reduce the price on new launches (see the Cascade Lake-X example above), which, arguably, saves Intel's face on claims of only being able to compete on pricing - which lurks dangerously close to Intel being painted as the budget, price-cut alternative to AMD.
(Raevenlord)
21.Jan.2020
NZXT, a leading developer of software-powered hardware solutions for PC gaming, today announces the C Series line of 80 plus Gold modular ATX power supplies. Continuing their partnership with Seasonic, one of the most highly regarded PSU manufacturers, NZXT has created three new power supplies with the C650, C750, and C850. They are built with high-quality components that are backed by a 10-year warranty, ensuring peace of mind. The C Series is available in 650w, 750w, and 850w variants that are 80 PLUS Gold certified giving builders several options to find a PSU that suits their needs. Read full story
(Raevenlord)
21.Jan.2020
Seagate had plenty of things to show off at their CES booth, however, some things specially stuck out, like the Lyve Drive Mobile system. Developed to address the need for data movement between different endpoints, the Lyve Drive system comes in a few flavors. First in the line is a Lyve Drive Cards and Card Reader solution, which offers 1 TB CFexpress cards on the go, and a portable reader for them to read the data on the spot. Next up is the Lyve Drive Shutte which resembles an autonomous data storage and data transport solution that offers capacities of up to 16 TB of HDD or SSD storage. Another Part of the Lyve Drive ecosystem is a Lyve Drive Mobile Array, which offers a sealed and ruggedized solution for carrying up to 6 of Seagate's 18 TB Exos HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording) hard drives for a total capacity of 108 TB. Next in the lineup is the Lyve Drive Modular Array - a 4-bay flexible solution that offers various configurations for business, so their deployment strategy of these devices varies. It uses Seagate's MACH.2 multi-actuator technology that transfers the data concurrently. Last but not least is a Lyve Drive Rackmount Reciver which is a 4U rackmount hub that allows for direct connection of Lyve Drive arrays into the data center, without a need to reconnect any of the data center networking specially for storage transfer.
(AleksandarK)
21.Jan.2020
At this year's CES InWin had a lot to show off. Starting with its signature case designed to impress even the best PC case modders in the world, InWin wanted to show us what they are capable of. Called the Diéy, this PC case is made out of many materials like aluminium, SECC steel, and plexiglass, in order to form a very unique looking case. Offering a robotic sphered structure that is covered with plexiglass cuts makes it look like a science-fiction creation, rather than a case. While offering unique looks, it is capable of housing an E-ATX motherboard, has support for graphics cards with up to 360 mm in length. There is also support for one 120 mm radiator at the back of the case and one 360 mm radiator at its top, so water cooling capabilities are not lacking here. Read full story
(AleksandarK)
21.Jan.2020
SteelSeries, the leader in gaming and esports peripherals, today announces the Rival 3 gaming mouse, and Apex 3 and Apex 5 gaming keyboards - high performance gaming peripherals approachable for any gamer. With these products, SteelSeries has sought to bring the innovation and performance of its most premium offerings to a wider audience of gamers. "There are so many gamers out there that are stuck using boring, traditional office peripherals for gaming," said Ehtisham Rabbani, SteelSeries CEO. "With these new products, we set office products in our sights and sought to retool our cutting-edge technologies and put them into products that are accessible for every gamer. No one should have to be stuck using run-of-the-mill office products for gaming." Read full story
(VSG)
21.Jan.2020
AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.3 beta drivers. These drivers add support for the new Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card that's hitting the shelves today; in addition to fixing a handful issues. To begin with, the drivers address a display signal loss noticed when performing parallel actions such as web browsing, gaming or watching video. Game crashes related to Nioh, Dragon Quest Builders 2, WWE 2K20, Dead or Alive 6 and Atelier Ryza were fixed. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus now appears correctly in Radeon Software. Text overflow in some UI elements have been fixed. Loss of fan-tuning settings when switching between available GPUs has been fixed. Another kind of intermittent black screen on desktop idling for extended periods has been fixed. DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.3 Read full story
(btarunr)
21.Jan.2020
There can be no better cause for celebration than knowing that you've got the same product for much less. URCDKeys is an international discount software vendor that's celebrating New Year across cultures, around the world, with a new sale on popular software to go with your new PC builds or current PCs stuck with older software. Get genuine, globally-valid licenses to Windows 10 Pro, the preferred operating system of pro-users and enthusiasts, for USD $12.73 upon applying a TechPowerUp-exclusive discount code. Office 2016 Professional Plus is another key component of home desktops. Get for as little as $29.82. Why not pair them both for just $36.50? When you're at it, don't forget to check out their New Year Sale for more such amazing deals on genuine software. Don't forget to apply the coupon code TP20 at check-out to avail the prices you see here. Buy Windows 10 Pro from URCDKeys for $12.73 | Buy Office 2016 Professional Plus for $29.82 from URCDKeys | Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2016 Professional Plus Combo for $36.50
(btarunr)
21.Jan.2020
be quiet!, the market leader in PC power supplies in Germany since 2007, is expanding the company's most silent power supply series with 80 PLUS Platinum-certified models. In addition to the increased efficiency, Straight Power 11 Platinum power supplies will include a state-of-the-art and high-quality topology, additional connection options, and models from 550 up to 1,200 watts. The base characteristics remain untouched, such as the whisper-quiet operation, exemplary cooling concept, and wire-free interior. All models of the Straight Power 11 Platinum series have been awarded the 80 PLUS Platinum certification and offer an efficiency of up to 94.1 percent at 230 V input. Thanks to an active PFC, the power factor is a maximum of 0.99, and the power supplies meet the ErP standard with less than 0.16 watts consumption in standby mode, ensuring lower energy consumption, better cooling and low noise levels. Read full story
(btarunr)
21.Jan.2020
Noctua today introduced another addition to its chromax line of all-black CPU coolers: the new NH-L9a-AM4 chromax.black is a low-profile quiet CPU cooler for AMD's Ryzen-based HTPCs and Small Form Factor (SFF) builds. Thanks to the same proven heatsink design and NF-A9x14 PWM fan as the original NH-L9a-AM4, it stays true to the same successful formula of fusing a height of only 37 mm with strong performance and excellent quietness of operation, as well as 100% RAM and PCIe compatibility. At the same time, the chromax.black version, with its black fan and black coated heatsink, combines these assets with a sleek stealth look. "AMD's Ryzen platform has become more and more popular over the last few months, not only for high-end builds but also for compact HTPCs and Small Form Factor systems", says Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). "We've already introduced the black NH-L9i low-profile cooler for Intel in October, but now we also want to give design-conscious AMD users a new option with the black version of NH-L9a-AM4!" Read full story
(btarunr)
21.Jan.2020
An unknown Lenovo notebook powered by the 15-Watt Ryzen 7 4700U "Renoir" 8-core processor was put through Geekbench. The chip yielded scores of 4910 single-core, and 21693 multi-core. This puts the 4700U ahead of the Core i7-1065G7, which is known to score around 4400 points on average in the single-core test, and around 17000 on average, in the multi-core test, falling behind due to fewer CPU cores. The 4700U features an 8-core CPU based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture. Its desktop compatriot, the Ryzen 7 3700X, is significantly faster, with around 20% higher single-core, and over 60% higher multi-core performance. This is probably because the 3700X is unconstrained with its 65-Watt TDP and significantly higher power limits. It also has four times more L3 cache, but that's probably to cushion the IFOP interconnect between the CPU chiplet and I/O die.
(btarunr)
21.Jan.2020
NVIDIA will apparently still be using Pascal when they launch their next generation of low-power discrete graphics solutions for mobile systems. The MX300 series will replace the current crop of MX200 series (segregated in three products in the form of the MX230, MX250 10 W and MX250 25 W). The new MX300 keeps the dual-tiered system, but ups the ante on the top of the line MX350. Even though it's still Pascal, on a 14 nm process, the MX350 should see an increase in CUDA cores to 640 (by using NVIDIA's Pascal GP107 chip) from the MX250's 384. Performance, then, should be comparable to the NVIDIA GTX 1050. The MX330, on the other hand, will keep specifications of the MX250, which signals a tier increase from the 256 execution units in the MX230 to 384. This should translate to appreciable performance increases for the new MX300 series, despite staying on NVIDIA's Pascal architecture. The new lineup is expected to be announced on February.
(Raevenlord)
20.Jan.2020
PowerColor today issued a press release where they present the world their new Red Devil and Red Dragon models of AMD's RX 5600 XT graphics cards. This comes after reports on AMD's move towards increasing TDP, memory and core clockspeeds on their new graphics card so as to better compete with NVIDIA's recently price-cut RTX 2060, which would make it a much better performer than AMD's RX 5600 XT at a slightly higher price ($279 vs $299). Hence a reported strike back from AMD in increasing performance for their RX 5600 XT with increased power envelope (160 W over 150 W), faster memory (at 14 Gbps instead of the original 12 Gbps) and increased core clocks (1615 MHz gaming and 1750 MHz boost, versus 1375 MHz gaming and 1560 MHz on AMD's CES press-event slides). The change in configuration brought about changes in the card design, with the higher-powered Red Devil coming in with 1x 8-pin and 1x 6-pin power delivery inputs, instead of the firstly developed 8-pin only. The changes have been brought about by a BIOS change, and not all cards will ship with the new specifications. However, PowerColor said that a BIOS update will be made available for customers to get their RX 5600 XT on steroids. Of course, whether or not it should be the onus of users to do such an update (which may risk in bricking their graphics card) is another matter entirely. The press release follows. Read full story
(Raevenlord)
20.Jan.2020
NVIDIA's next-generation of graphics cards codenamed Ampere is set to arrive sometime this year, presumably around GTC 2020 which takes place on March 22nd. Before the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang officially reveals the specifications of these new GPUs, we have the latest round of rumors coming our way. According to VideoCardz, which cites multiple sources, the die configurations of the upcoming GeForce RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 have been detailed. Using the latest 7 nm manufacturing process from Samsung, this generation of NVIDIA GPU offers a big improvement from the previous generation. For starters the two dies which have appeared have codenames like GA103 and GA104, standing for RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 respectively. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) count. The smaller GA104 die has as much as 48 SMs, resulting in 3072 CUDA cores, while the bigger, oddly named, GA103 die has as much as 60 SMs that result in 3840 CUDA cores in total. These improvements in SM count should result in a notable performance increase across the board. Alongside the increase in SM count, there is also a new memory bus width. The smaller GA104 die that should end up in RTX 3070 uses a 256-bit memory bus allowing for 8/16 GB of GDDR6 memory, while its bigger brother, the GA103, has a 320-bit wide bus that allows the card to be configured with either 10 or 20 GB of GDDR6 memory. In the images below you can check out the alleged diagrams for yourself and see if this looks fake or not, however, it is recommended to take this rumor with a grain of salt.
(AleksandarK)
20.Jan.2020
ASUS today rolled out the ROG Theta Electret, a premium stereo variant of the ROG Theta headset from 2019, featuring a hi-fi grade 120 mm electret driver in charge of reproducing extremely precise high and mid frequency sound; while a conventional 45 mm neodymium driver handles lows (bass). Both drivers sit in an airtight chamber. The headset is purely analog, and features conventional 3.5 mm jacks, and ASUS made sure to get rid of all digital components, such as the USB DAC and even the RGB-illuminated ROG logo. Thanks to the electret driver, the headset enjoys a wide frequency-response of 20-40,000 Hz. The detachable microphone, too, is fully analogue. The headset supports both single headphones+mic jack, and split 3.5 mm jacks. ASUS didn't reveal pricing.
(btarunr)
20.Jan.2020
The Japanese cooler specialist Scythe introduces a refreshed version of the popular Mugen 5 Rev. B CPU cooler as the first product of the year 2020. The new version, called Mugen 5 Black RGB Edition, comes with a black top-plate and a high quality RGB fan from the new Kaze Flex 120 RGB PWM series. The Black RGB Edition offers a much stronger contrast and a matching fan, with frame and vibration absorber completely in black. All the performance features, like the high compatibility and the groundbreaking mounting system are inherited from the award-winning Mugen 5 Rev. B. The new Mugen 5 Black RGB Edition refines the design and combines it with the numerous performance features of the popular and award-winning CPU cooler series. The black anodized cover of the heat-sink forms a sharp contrast to the aluminium end-caps of the heatpipes and the diamond-cut Scythe logo. The fan frame is kept in black color and matches seamlessly to the unified design. No compromises have to be made in terms of cooling performance and efficiency. In addition, the new Black RGB Edition utilizes total of six high-quality and powerful copper heatpipes, which connect the solid copper base plate with the heat-sink. Both the copper heatpipes and the copper baseplate are refined by the nickel-plating process, which ensures a very unified and high-quality appearance of the Mugen 5 Black RGB Edition CPU cooler. Read full story
(btarunr)
20.Jan.2020
