G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is announcing an extreme performance DDR5 memory kit based on the latest 24 GB module capacity, with a specification of DDR5-8000 CL38-48-48 at 48 GB (24 GB x2) under the flagship Trident Z5 RGB series, and setting a new bar for extreme overclocked memory with 24 GB capacity modules.

Over the past month, memory manufacturers started releasing DDR5 memory modules of 24 GB and 48 GB densities, which make up 48 GB (2x 24 GB), 96 GB (2x 48 GB or 4x 24 GB) and even 192 GB (4x 48 GB) capacities. There's only one catch—these modules only work with 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" and 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors, as their memory controllers support a maximum of 192 GB of memory, and 24/48/96 GB DIMM densities. MEGAsizeGPU decided to find out what happens when one of these kits is installed on an AMD Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" platform.

A Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5600 48 GB (2x 24 GB) memory kit was installed on a machine consisting of an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor, and an ASUS ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming motherboard (BIOS version 1222). It turns out that the machine POSTs, and is able to start the UEFI setup program. Here, the program is able to display the correct 48 GB memory amount, and the memory density of each of the two modules. The trouble is, Windows would not boot, and does not go past the Boot Manager. It halts with an error message that indicates a hardware problem.

Eiswolf 2 AiO - now also for custom designs of RTX 4080/4090 and RX 7900XT/XTX GPUs! Alphacool presents additional innovative solutions for cooling Nvidia's Geforce RTX 4080 and 4090 and AMD's RX 7900XT/XTX graphics cards.

The enormous waste heat of the new graphics card generation is excellently dissipated with these coolers. The very good water flow and the large cooling surface are due to the particularly filigree fin structure. The jet plate with revised inflow engine also distributes the water perfectly on the cooling fins. The complete chrome plating of the cooler not only provides resistant protection against acids, scratches and damage, but also achieves a beautiful homogeneity and remarkable shine. The Aurora design of the cooler is kept visually calm and simple. This is evident not only in the cooler's design, but also in the wonderfully even lighting achieved via digitally addressable RGB LEDs.

I've been using the ASUS ROG Z690 Formula motherboard in all my recent CPU water block reviews, and also detailed it here for a specific EK VRM bridge block article. While the board has reached end-of-life status at ASUS internally, the company's customers are only just starting to face problems. The board's unique selling point is that it comes with an optional CrossChill EK III hybrid VRM thermal solution, which is effectively a waterblock for your VRMs to keep them cool at all times. Based on ASUS's official advertisement of "nickel-plated" and EK's involvement, everybody assumed that the material used is nickel-plated copper, but it turns out it's something different, most probably nickel-plated aluminium.

This is not the first time that ASUS has failed the material mix in their watercooling products. The first generation ROG Formula motherboard VRM blocks used plated-aluminium that introduced corrosion when added to a watercooling loop that has copper/brass/steel components elsewhere. Mixing metals in a watercooling loop is a bad idea and will result in galvanic corrosion from the different electrochemical potential of the metals. This can result in the block etching off and flakes/chunks getting in the loop to create an increasingly worse reaction with the coolant used. This can lead to blocked channels and even pump failure due to the corroded materials jamming the impeller.

AMD's high-end X670E motherboard chipset combines two Promontory 21 chips working together to deliver a single solution. With regularly-sized ATX motherboards, having two chips to form a chipset is fine, as there is much room on the PCB. However, with Mini-ITX motherboards, packing two Promontory 21 chips is difficult as the PCB area is limited. To combat this, ASUS introduced an interesting solution to solve the problem and allowed the company to ship the high-end X670E chipset inside a Mini-ITX form factor. Thanks to UNIKO's Hardware's findings, we look at the exciting solution ASUS used to solve this problem.

Instead of two Promontory 21 chips side by side, one is placed on the motherboard directly, while the other stands vertically attached by M.2 PCIe slot. Below, the chipset's pictures and the highlight show how it looks disassembled.

It may be small, but it's fast! The new ROG Swift Pro PG248QP is a 24.1-inch planar gaming monitor with a measly Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution, but an at an incredible 540 Hz refresh rate, making it the world's fastest E-Sports display. This display is so quick, and ASUS set up a 144 Hz display next to it for comparison, and one could tell the difference. The monitor also features NVIDIA G-SYNC, and NVIDIA Reflex Analyzer, along with a USB 3.2 hub, so you can plug your Reflex-compatible gaming mouse to the monitor, and the monitor itself to an upstream USB 3.2 source, besides the DisplayPort connection. Another interesting aspect about this monitor is that ASUS has integrated a high-end USB audio DAC sourced from ESS, so you can plug your analog headset to the display and get audio quality on par with a high-end onboard audio solution, or even a mid-range discrete sound card.

Elsewhere across the ASUS ROG booth, we caught the ASUS ROG Swift PG27AQDM-OLED, the company's fastest gaming monitors to use an OLED panel. This 27-inch monitor offers WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) resolution, with 0.03 ms response time, and 240 Hz refresh rate, besides 1,000 nits peak brightness, and 99% DCI-P3 coverage. The panel features an anti-glare micro-coating. OLED displays tend to produce more heat than backlit LCD displays, and so this monitor packs a series of thermal innovations to prolong the lifespan of the OLED panel. It supports AMD FreeSync Premium,

ASUS ROG showed off a slender lineup of gaming input devices at the 2023 International CES. These included the ROG Azoth wireless keyboard, and the ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition wireless mouse. Both of these are being offered as tournament-grade peripherals for e-sports professionals, implementing the ASUS ROG SpeedNova ultra low-latency wireless technology. The ROG Azoth is a slick compact wireless keyboard with an 81-key set (not including the volume rocker). It is characterized by an monochrome OLED display that can be programmed to display real-time HUD information from the game, hardware monitoring, or just about anything.

The ASUS ROG Azoth features hot-swappable, ROG NX mechanical switches that are factory pre-lubed; along with ROG keyboard stabilizers, and PBT doubleshot keycaps. The keyboard features a gasket-mount design with 3-layer dampening. The switches can be re-lubricated, a starter kit is included with the keyboard. The ROG SpeedNova wireless module supports RF, Bluetooth, as well as USB direct connection. The ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition is a 54 g ultra-lightweight wireless gaming mouse with a 3+2 button set, along with Aim Lab Settings Optimizer. Under the hood is a 36,000 dpi ROG Aimpoint sensor, and the ROG SpeedNova wireless tech. The mouse offers up to 90 hours of playtime in its 2.4 GHz RF mode (with the lighting turned off).

At the 2023 International CES, ASUS ROG announced several of its upcoming gaming notebooks across several form-factors. ASUS was one of the very few gaming PC brands to show off upcoming products based on an AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors besides those based on 13th Gen Intel Core processors. The star-attraction is the ROG Flow Z13 (GZ301-2023), an ultraportable gaming tablet that folds into a notebook—a very rare device. It packs a 13-inch 16:10 ROG Nebula display with 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution, 165 Hz, 3 ms response time, and NVIDIA G-SYNC. Under the hood, the ROG Flow Z13 rocks an Intel Core i9-13900H 6P+8E processor, GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU with Advanced Optimus. The device puts out a 170° kick stand, and a detachable full-size keyboard.

The 2023 ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is the company's fastest gaming notebook to be powered by an AMD processor. The 14-inch conventional form-factor notebook packs a 2560 x 1600 pixels mini-LED display with 165 Hz refresh-rate, 3 ms response time, 100% DCI-P3 coverage, and G-SYNC. The main muscle is an AMD Ryzen 7000 series processor (very likely from the "Phoenix Point" Ryzen 7045 series), and a GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU. While not an AMD Advantage laptop, ASUS has given this its own in-house ROG Intelligent Cooling system that incorporates vapor-chamber base plates and liquid-metal TIM.

ASUS showed us its GeForce RTX 4080 Noctua Edition graphics card that it formally announced yesterday. To call this card thick would be an understatement, as it's possibly the first graphics card that is 5 slots thick! The card easily overshoots what constitutes 4 slots, and is technically 4.2 to 4.3 slots; but then expansion slot counts are whole numbers rounded to the next digit despite what marketing says.

This card combines an ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4080 PCB with an air-based cooling solution designed by Noctua. The cooler has two large aluminium fin-stacks that have been skewered by eight 6 mm-thick nickel-plated copper heatpipes, and ventilated by a pair of Noctua's top-of-the-line NF-A12x25 120 mm fans that feature fluid-dynamic bearings. The fan-tuning for this card is a Noctua-ASUS collaboration, and promises to make this the quietest air-cooled RTX 4080 you can buy.

Last year it felt like DDR5-6000 to DDR5-6400 was the top of the PC memory food-chain, and in a year, this has been pushed up to DDR5-8000. Platforms such as the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" can already handle such high memory speeds, and ADATA has designed such a memory module that includes an Intel XMP 3.0 profile that enables the advertised DDR5-8000 speed at the click of a button. The new ADATA XPG Caster RGB DDR5-8000 features a chunky aluminium heatspreader that's crowned by a silicone addressable RGB LED diffuser. It's been tested for compatibility with both Intel and AMD platforms, however only an XMP 3.0 profile is included.

Elsewhere across the ADATA booth, we also came across the company's latest SD 8.0 memory card that uses PCI-Express 3.0 x2 physical layer and NVMe 1.3 protocol layer, to offer sequential speeds of up to 1600 MB/s reads, with up to 1300 MB/s writes, including LDPC ECC. The card comes in 256 GB and 512 GB capacities, and is backwards-compatible with UHS-I devices. Back at the memory section, we found an XPG + ASUS ROG co-branded Lancer ROG DDR5 memory that comes at speeds of up to DDR5-6600. Lastly, there's the ACE-6400, a mid-range DDR5-6400 memory module targeting creators, that runs at DDR5-5600 native (JEDEC), and its advertised DDR5-6400 using an XMP 3.0 profile.

ROG Rapture GT-BE98 is the world's first quad-band WiFi 7 gaming router. Leveraging the full potential of WiFi 7 with 320 MHz channel support in the 6 GHz band, it delivers up to 160% faster speeds than the previous generation. In addition, with 4K QAM modulation that can pack more data into transmissions, peak data rates are up to 20% higher, delivering incredible speeds of up to 25,000 Mbps. Furthermore, two additional revolutionary features, Multi-Link Operation and Multi-RU Puncturing, allow the GT-BE98 to deliver more efficient and reliable wireless connections.

Multi-link operation simultaneously transmits across different bands and channels to increase throughput to the device, lower the latency, and improve reliability. Multi-RU puncturing segments a wide channel bandwidth into smaller units, enabling puncturing to eliminate interference for the remaining bandwidth and increase efficiency. Gamers can enjoy up to 10X-faster data-transfer speeds for bandwidth-demanding tasks with one 10 Gbps WAN/LAN port and two 10 Gbps LAN ports. In addition, for gamers who live in larger homes, the exclusive ASUS RangeBoost Plus improves signal range and overall coverage. And, ROG-exclusive triple-level game acceleration offers fantastic gaming experiences.

EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing a new Intel LGA 1700 socket-based monoblock, the EK-Quantum Momentum² ROG Maximus Z790 Hero D-RGB - Plexi. This monoblock is engineered specifically for the ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO motherboard from ASUS with the included I/O cover making the Polymo Lighting Display integration a breeze. The addressable D-RGB LEDs on the monoblock are compatible with ASUS Aura Sync RGB control and offer a full lighting customization experience for every single diode at any given time. This Quantum monoblock is also EK-Matrix7 compliant.

This is a complete all-in-one (CPU and motherboard) liquid cooling solution for Intel's 13th Generation Raptor Lake processors. It is compatible with the LGA 1700 socket on the ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard. The monoblock is also fully compatible with the previous generation of Intel Core processors (12th Generation Alder Lake) as well as ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard. This monoblock uses the latest generation Velocity² cooling engine to ensure the best possible CPU cooling without reducing flow to other components. It directly cools the Intel Raptor Lake CPU, VRM section, and LAN controller.

More performance for GeForce RTX 4090! With the Eisblock Aurora, Alphacool presents new, innovative coolers for active water cooling of Gigabyte, ASUS, Palit as well as Gainward graphics cards. In order to dissipate the enormous waste heat of this graphics card generation as effectively as possible, numerous optimizations have been made to the water cooler compared to the previous models. The fin structure has been adapted and allows a very effective water flow while simultaneously increasing the cooling surface. The modified jet plate with improved inflow engine ensures optimum distribution of the water on the cooling fins.

The fully chrome-plated copper base is resistant to acids, scratches and damage. Additionally, the chrome plating provides homogeneity and shine that cannot be achieved by nickel plating. The illumination from the digitally addressable RGB LEDs is even better distributed throughout the cooler thanks to the chrome plating. The Aurora design of the GeForce RTX 40XX Eisblock Generation is visually quiet and sleek because only one O-ring runs around the entire cooler. Also, the design around the cooling fins and jetplate makes for a cleaner look.

The most expensive custom-design NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 will be priced at $1,550, putting it just $50 short of the $1,600 baseline MSRP of the much faster RTX 4090, according to a pricing leak of custom-design cards on popular PC components retailer MicroCenter. The most interesting takeaway from this leak is that there will actually be RTX 4080 cards at the NVIDIA-set baseline MSRP of $1,200. These include the GIGABYTE Eagle, ZOTAC Trinity, ASUS TUF Gaming, and PNY XLR8 Verto. NVIDIA appears to be telling its partners to sell at least one custom-design RTX 4080 SKU at the baseline price.

Most factory-overclocked custom-design RTX 4080 SKUs are within $125 of the $1,200 baseline, with the GIGABYTE Eagle OC priced at $1,240, GIGABYTE Gaming OC at $1,280, MSI Ventus 3X OC at $1,280, and the premium MSI Gaming X Trio at $1,325. The top-tier custom-design cards start here, with the GIGABYTE AORUS Master priced at $1,350, the MSI SUPRIM X (air-cooled) at $1,400, the ZOTAC AMP Extreme AIRO at $1,400, ASUS TUF Gaming OC at $1,500; and the ASUS ROG Strix OC at $1,550, which is just $50 short of the cheapest RTX 4090 (baseline-spec). Will anyone pick the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4080 O16G over the cheapest RTX 4090 (assuming availability of both)? That's a social experiment to watch out for.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is thrilled to showcase extreme memory bandwidth performance of high-frequency DDR5-8000 32 GB (16 GB x2) & DDR5-7800 32 GB (2x 16 GB) overclocked memory kits on the latest Intel Core i9-13900K Processor and ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX motherboard. Working in close partnership with the ASUS motherboard team, a single G.SKILL memory module was overclocked to a staggering DDR5-10000 under air cooling.

Dedicated to developing the fastest possible DDR5 memory on the latest 13th Gen Intel Core processor and Intel Z790 chipset, G.SKILL showcases the high memory bandwidth performance of DDR5-8000 32 GB (2x16GB) memory kit on the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX motherboard. The following screenshots show the DDR5-8000 CL40 32 GB (2x16GB) and DDR5-7800 CL38 32 GB (2x 16 GB) memory kits validated on an Intel Core i9-13900K processor and ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX motherboard (BIOS 0702) platform, with the DDR5-8000 CL40 32 GB (2x16GB) memory kit reaching memory bandwidth read speed of over 124 GB/s and write speed of over 120 GB/s on the AIDA64 memory benchmark.

Danish online retailer Proshop.dk jumped the gun with listing its stock of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 "Ada" graphics cards. These include custom-design cards from ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, and Inno3D. While pictures of GIGABYTE and Inno3D cards weren't up, the site put out pictures of ASUS ROG Strix, TUF Gaming; and MSI Gaming X and Ventus 3X models. Prices range between 12,190 Danish Krone (US $1,626) to 14,590 Krone ($1,946), including taxes. The pictures give us our first look at MSI's new cost-effective Ventus 3X custom-design, which will be positioned close to NVIDIA's baseline MSRP (of $1,199 for the RTX 4080). The ASUS ROG Strix, TUF Gaming, and MSI Gaming X designs appear identical their RTX 4090 siblings. These listings appear at least 16 days ahead of when these cards are expected to be available from.

Phanteks announces the release of the new Glacier G40 ASUS GPU block, designed specifically for the ASUS STRIX/TUF RTX 4090/4080 Series cards. The Glacier G40 ASUS GPU Block brings the ultimate cooling performance with unique water block features to build stunning water-cooled systems. Phanteks' Glacier G40 ASUS GPU Block provides a high-performance water-cooling solution custom-designed for the latest ASUS GeForce RTX 4000 series cards. A transparent acrylic jet plate is positioned directly over the GPU die to ensure optimal heat transfer. The backplate is included with all models to provide a smooth integrated look while providing additional cooling to the back of the PCB. In addition, the full-cover copper cold plate directly cools all memory and power delivery components on the PCB with high-quality thermal pads.

The Glacier G40 ASUS GPU Block also introduces some new features, such as a new fitting location to allow for better tube routing, even in the most compact chassis. To improve stability, a GPU support bracket is added to connect the water block to the rear PCI bracket so that the GPU is mounted more securely. Like all Phanteks' Glacier products, the Glacier G40 ASUS GPU Block is made in Taiwan using only 100% copper, cast acrylic, anodized aluminium covers, and extremely durable Viton O-rings known from the automotive and aerospace industries. The integrated D-RGB lighting beautifully complements the water block and can synchronize with Phanteks' D-RGB accessories and compatible motherboards.

Intel Core i9-13900K processor has just been launched, and overclockers worldwide got their hand on a few samples to make history. According to the HWBot submission, a Swedish overclocker named "elmor" has pushed Intel's top-end consumer SKU to a fantastic 8.812 GHz. For more than eight years, the record for the single-highest overclocking speed was held by AMD FX-8370, from the now-bygone era of AMD Black Edition processors. The overclocking attempt was performed using liquid nitrogen (LN2) that cools the chip using its −195.8 °C temperature. Pushing core voltage to 1.850 Volts and VCCIN to 2 Volts, multiplier set to x88, and a bus speed of 100.15 MHz. In addition to the Core i9-13900K CPU, elmor used ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 APEX motherboard and 32 GB DDR5 GSKILL memory running at 4808 MT/s.

As a reminder, the FX-8370 CPU was holding the number one sport for eight years with a speed of 8.722 GHz. Beating the FX-8370 by just 90 MHz, it will be interesting to see if any of the upcoming CPU SKUs can match this overclocking record, and we are curious if any contender will come to beat elmor's current record.

Amazon US has kindly revealed the pricing for a pair of upcoming Intel Z790 chipset based motherboards from ASUS. For those hoping for better motherboard pricing versus AMD's X670 based boards, we have to be the bringer of bad news, as the two fall in the same ballpark, although Intel seems to have a slight edge here. The cheaper of the two models is the ASUS Prime Z790-P WiFi, which is the Intel equivalent to the Prime X670-P board for AMD's AM5 socket. The Prime Z790-P offers slightly weaker connectivity around the back, but has more PCIe slots compared to its AMD sibling. Unfortunately, it seems like Amazon doesn't stock the Prime X670-P, so we had to look elsewhere for pricing and Newegg charges US$289.99 for it, whereas Amazon charges US$249.99 for the Prime Z790-P, making it a more attractive option. However, that's still US$30 more than its predecessor, the Prime Z690-P, making this a pretty steep jump in price considering the two are very similar in terms of what you get for your money.

The second board is the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, which is a premium product, something that's reflected in the pricing as well. Features like Thunderbolt 4 and an ROG Hyper M.2 card for PCIe 5.0 SSDs are included here, as well as an extended bundle. There's no direct AMD equivalent here, as ASUS only has a model in the US$400 range and one in the US$1000 range on the AMD side. However, it appears that ASUS has decided to keep the same price point as the ROG Maximus Z690 Hero. This isn't entirely surprising, as the boards appear to be almost identical, bar some change to the layout to the rear I/O. At US$629.99, this isn't a cheap board, but it wasn't expected either, as ASUS does charge a premium price for its ROG products. Both boards are said to be shipping from the 20th of October.

A user named "orangezone" submitted a CPU-Z validation for an alleged retail AMD Ryzen 7 7700X processor, revealing its key specs that include 5.425 GHz clocks at 1.152 V core-voltage. The submission includes a CPU-Z Bench run for the processor, which puts the single-threaded performance at 774 points, and the multi-threaded performance of the 8-core/16-thread processor at 8381 points. The single-threaded performance is around 20% higher than that of the previous-gen flagship Ryzen 9 5950X, and about 1% faster than the Core i9-12900K ("Golden Cove" P-core). This particular bench run was performed on a Gigabyte X670E AORUS Master motherboard, with DDR5-6400 CL30 memory.

In separate news, BenchLeaks spotted a Geekbench run of the Ryzen 7 7700X (by a different user); on an ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero and DDR5-6000 memory. Here, the processor scored 2209 points in the single-threaded test, and 14459 points in the multi-threaded one, in Geekbench 5.4.5. This is a surprising result, as it puts the single-threaded performance of the 7700X at about 16% higher than the Core i7-12700K, and a fascinating 2% higher than the 8P+4E "Alder Lake" chip in multi-threaded tests. The 7700X launches in the same market segment as the i7-12700K, when it goes on sale this September 27.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the ROG Rapture GT6, the first ROG mesh WiFi system optimized for gamers. This tri-band WiFi 6 system uses a sophisticated blend of cutting-edge components and software to deliver blazing-fast download speeds, low-latency gaming, dead-zone elimination, and robust security.

The ROG Rapture GT6 can deliver up to 10,000 Mbps of bandwidth, courtesy of two 5 GHz bands running at up to 4804 Mbps each, and one 2.4 GHz band running at up to 574 Mbps. This massive bandwidth can cover up to 5,800 square feet because of nine internal antennas and ASUS RangeBoost Plus technology. And for those who desire true multi-gigabit wired connections, there is also a 2.5 Gbps WAN port and LAN aggregation. Meanwhile, the ROG touch includes triple-level game acceleration to prevent jitter, reduce lag, lower pings, and increase speeds, empowering memorable gaming experiences.

A possible PCB layout diagram of the ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E APEX motherboard was leaked to the web. We could tell it's the APEX, looking at its 1DPC (one DIMM per channel) memory layout. The ROG APEX line of motherboards are geared toward extreme overclocking, with 1DPC being the best possible memory topology. We could make out several features from this diagram. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe. A mammoth 26-phase VRM powers the CPU. The board appears to have its power connectors and onboard buttons angled sideways, making it most suitable for bench rigs.

The AMD Socket AM5 is wired to two DDR5 DIMM slots (one DIMM per channel, with two sub-channels, each); and a PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot. This splits to a second slot in x8 mode. The third slot is electrical x8, and wired to the X670E chipset. While there are three M.2 slots onboard, this is likely Gen 4 x4. The board's main Gen 5 M.2 slots are located on an included DIMM.2 daughterboard that inserts into a proprietary slot next to the DIMM slots. It's likely that the board offers USB4 connectivity, besides SupremeFX HD audio, Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5 GbE, and an abundance of USB 3.x connectivity in various forms.

ASUS has unveiled its first 32-inch ROG Strix monitor with 4K resolution in the shape of the XG32UQ. It comes with all the features you'd expect from a modern 4K display, such as HDMI 2.1 and a 120 Hz mode for consoles. It obviously also has a DP 1.4 port and supports up to 160 Hz refresh rate thanks to its Fast IPS panel. It's certified for FreeSync Premium Pro and is G-Sync Compatible, as well as having a DisplayHDR 600 certification. Oddly enough, ASUS didn't implement USB-C support, nor can the XG32UQ function as a KVM, a feature that has become pretty standard on higher-end monitors like this. It does have a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Type-B input and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A outs though.

The panel meets 96 percent of the DCI-P3 and 130 percent of the sRGB colour space and the typical brightness in SDR mode is 450 cd/m². ASUS has also implemented it's game visual features and what the company calls extreme low motion blur. The panel comes factory calibrated, so the XG32UQ should be possible to use for work as well as gaming. ASUS has also taken a leaf out of Corsair's playbook by implementing a screw mount at the top of the stand, to which something like a webcam mount could be fitted. There's no word on pricing, but based on pricing for similar products, we'd hazard a guess that it'll end up around the $1000 mark.

It's a busy day when it comes to Intel Raptor Lake benchmark leaks and this time around, we're looking at a pair of Core i5-13600K CPUs, but in two different motherboards. The first CPU sits in an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme board and is paired with 32 GB of DDR5 memory, whereas the second CPU is in an ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E board, this one also paired with 32 GB of RAM, but DDR4 rather than DDR5. Both systems are running Windows 10 and unlike the Core i9-13900K results that we saw a couple of weeks ago, these two results are both valid according to the Geekbench results browser.

Courtesy of @harukaze5719 we have a nice graph with the results below, even comparing them to the average Geekbench results for a Core i5-12600K, as well as a Ryzen 9 5950X and a Ryzen 5 5600X. The Core i5-13600K beats everything in the single threaded results and the ASUS system is not far behind the Ryzen 9 5950X in the multithreaded tests. The ASUS system is significantly faster than the ASRock one though, so it seems like Raptor Lake is really making the most out of DDR5 memory. As we don't know the memory clocks, it's hard to say if that is also a contributing factor here, but it's likely that the ASUS system uses much faster memory, as in some of the sub-tests like Rigid Body Physics, the two systems are on par in terms of performance. It'll be interesting to see how Intel prices these upcoming CPUs, especially considering that the company has already warned it'll raise its prices in time for the retail availability of Raptor Lake.

EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing the EK-Quantum Momentum² ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme D-RGB - Plexi, a new Intel LGA1700 socket-based monoblock belonging to the Quantum Line of products. This monoblock is engineered specifically for the ROG MAXIMUS Z690 EXTREME motherboard from ASUS. The addressable D-RGB LED in the monoblock is compatible with ASUS Aura Sync RGB control and offers a full lighting customization experience for every single diode at any given time. This Momentum² monoblock is EK-Matrix7 compatible.

This is a complete, all-in-one (CPU and motherboard) liquid cooling solution for Intel 12th gen Core series processors and is compatible with the LGA 1700 socketed ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard. This monoblock uses the latest generation of EK Velocity² cooling engine to ensure the best possible CPU cooling without reducing the flow to other components. This water block directly cools the Alder Lake CPU and the VRM section. An additional I/O piece that carries the stock I/O LED cover is added, so the user does not lose the benefit of additional lighting and aesthetic of this Republic of Gamers motherboard.