Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher In A New Era of Gaming
A new generation of gaming consoles is due to hit the market later this year, and the hype cycle for the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 has been...
200 by Billy Tallis on 6/12/2020Jim Keller Resigns from Intel, Effective Immediately
Intel has just published a news release on its website stating that Jim Keller has resigned from the company, effective immediately, due to personal reasons. Jim Keller was hired by...
127 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/11/2020ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero Wi-Fi Review: The Tale of Two Motherboards
Some of the recent discussions around motherboard design are whether the motherboard manufacturers are actually adhering to the CPU vendor specifications. If a motherboard manufacturer improves the base power...
34 by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on 6/11/2020Electromigration: Why AMD Ryzen Current Boosting Won't Kill Your CPU
Electromigration is an issue that affects all electronics - the act of electrons bumping into silicon or copper atoms and moving them out of the crystal lattice raises the...
143 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 6/9/2020The Biostar Racing Z490GTN Review: $200 for Comet Lake mini-ITX
Small form factor boards are always a key talking point for any desktop market. The usual breakdown on Mini-ITX sales for any given generation is usually around 10%, and...
40 by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on 6/5/2020The Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-Inch) Review: A Refreshing Dip Into Ice Lake
The PC industry has introduced some remarkably exciting designs over the last five years or so. Some of those designs, such as the thin-bezel laptop, have been adopted by...
125 by Brett Howse on 6/3/2020The ASRock Z490 Taichi Motherboard Review: Punching LGA1200 Into Life
In our first Intel Z490 motherboard review, the ASRock Z490 Taichi takes center stage. With its recognizable Taichi clockwork inspired design, a 12+2 power delivery, three PCIe 3.0 x4...
63 by Gavin Bonshor on 5/27/2020Arm's New Cortex-A78 and Cortex-X1 Microarchitectures: An Efficiency and Performance Divergence
2019 was a great year for Arm. On the mobile side of things one could say it was business as usual, as the company continued to see successes with...
192 by Andrei Frumusanu on 5/26/2020Arm Announces The Mali-G78 GPU: Evolution to 24 Cores
Today as part of Arm’s 2020 TechDay announcements, alongside the release of the brand-new Cortex-A78 and Cortex-X1 CPUs, Arm is also revealing its brand-new Mali-G78 and Mali-G68 GPU...
36 by Andrei Frumusanu on 5/26/2020Avantek's Arm Workstation: Ampere eMAG 8180 32-core Arm64 Review
Arm desktop systems are quite a rarity. In fact, it’s quite an issue for the general Arm software ecosystem in terms of having appropriate hardware for developers to actually...
38 by Andrei Frumusanu on 5/22/2020The Intel Comet Lake Core i9-10900K, i7-10700K, i5-10600K CPU Review: Skylake We Go Again
The first thing that comes to mind with Intel’s newest line of 10th Generation desktop processors is one of ‘14nm Skylake, again?’. It is hard not to ignore the...
220 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/20/2020AMD to Support Zen 3 and Ryzen 4000 CPUs on B450 and X470 Motherboards
In a surprising twist, AMD has today announced that it intends to enable Ryzen 4000 and Zen 3 support on its older B450 and X470 Motherboards. This is going...
164 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/19/2020AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Why Is This Amazon's Best Selling CPU?
Every so often there comes a processor that captures the market. It ends up being that right combination of price, cores, frequency, performance, features and compatibility when added to...
114 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/18/2020Honor Magicbook 14 Notebook Review: Where Style Paints a Picasso
There are three major selling factors when it comes to laptops: Specifications, Price, and Style. It is exceedingly rare to have a laptop hit all three, and if often...
89 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/15/2020NVIDIA Ampere Unleashed: NVIDIA Announces New GPU Architecture, A100 GPU, and Accelerator
While NVIDIA’s usual presentation efforts for the year were dashed by the current coronavirus outbreak, the company’s march towards developing and releasing newer products has continued unabated. To that...
128 by Ryan Smith on 5/14/2020The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution
Users looking to build their own dual EPYC workstation or system, using completely off-the-shelf components, do not have a lot of options. Users can buy most of the CPUs...
37 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/13/2020The 1STPlayer Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W PSU Review: A New Challenger Emerges
Today we are taking a look at a fresh face in the PSU market, 1STPlayer and their Steampunk PSU series. The Steampunk 80+ Gold 750W that we are reviewing...
54 by E. Fylladitakis on 5/12/2020The AMD Ryzen 3 3300X and 3100 CPU Review: A Budget Gaming Bonanza
When AMD announced the new Ryzen 3 processors built on Zen 2, I was under the impression that these were essentially the reject parts from AMD’s successful Ryzen 3000...
250 by Dr. Ian Cutress on 5/7/2020The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Swifter With Ryzen 4000
Almost two years ago to the day, we had a chance to check out Acer’s Swift 3 laptop featuring AMD's first Ryzen Mobile platform, Raven Ridge. Acer has been...
192 by Brett Howse & Andrei Frumusanu on 5/5/2020The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined
After another long wait for a new Intel platform, Comet Lake and the 400 series finally descends. Here we get a new socket, support for up to 10-cores with...
52 by Gavin Bonshor on 4/30/2020