JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of Universal Flash Storage (UFS) version 3.1, JESD220E. In addition, an optional new companion standard, JESD220-3: UFS Host Performance Booster (HPB) Extension, has also been published. Developed for mobile applications and computing systems requiring high performance with low power consumption, UFS 3.1 introduces new features intended to help maximize device performance while minimizing power usage. Both JESD220E and JESD220-3 are available for download from the JEDEC website.

Kioxia Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, today announced that it has successfully developed its fifth-generation BiCS FLASH three-dimensional (3D) flash memory with a 112-layer vertically stacked structure. Kioxia plans to start shipping samples of the new device, which has a 512 gigabit (64 gigabytes) capacity with 3-bit-per-cell (triple-level cell, TLC) technology, for specific applications in the first quarter of calendar year 2020. The new device aims to fulfill ever-growing bit demands for a wide variety of applications, including traditional mobile devices, consumer and enterprise SSDs, emerging applications enabled by the new 5G networks, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

Going forward, Kioxia will apply its new fifth-generation process technology to larger capacity devices, such as 1 terabit (128 gigabytes) TLC and 1.33 terabit 4-bit-per-cell (quadruple-level cell, QLC) devices.

AMD introduced the latest edition of the "Raise the Game" bundle, which goes live in February. The mid-range Radeon RX 5500 XT is bolstered with a windfall of games and services. New purchases of RX 5500 XT graphics cards from participating retailers receive "Resident Evil 3," "Ghost Recon Breakpoint," and "Warcraft 3: Reforged," in addition to 3 months of Xbox Game Pass for PC. Buyers of performance-segment RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT cards purchasing from participating retailers, from February 4 till April 25 (with game redemptions ending on May 25), receive "Resident Evil 3" and "Monster Hunter World: Iceborne Master Edition." Buyers of the RX 560, RX 570, RX 580, RX 590, RX Vega series, Radeon VII, RX 5500 XT, and RX 5700 series receive Xbox Game Pass for PC. Curiously, RX 5600 XT is excluded from the game bundle.

ASUS today rolled out the TUG Gaming X3 Radeon RX 5700-series EVO graphics cards. These include the SKUs "TUF 3-RX5700-O8G-EVO-GAMING" for the RX 5700, and "TUF 3-RX5700XT-O8G-EVO-GAMING" for the RX 5700 XT. The two cards feature certain design tweaks over the original TUF Gaming RX 5700-series graphics cards that were criticized by tech reviewers for bad cooling performance. The updated TUF Gaming EVO cards feature an entirely different aluminium fin-stack heatsink from the one in the original TUF Gaming cards, which offers better contact with the various hot components on the PCB.

ASUS also updated the ventilation of the cooler, with three Axial-Tech fans replacing the conventional fans on the original. These fans feature impellers that are webbed at the edges, so air is guided axially (through the heatsink), and some of it isn't bled laterally. The fan in the center is slightly smaller than the ones on its sides. Clock speeds are unchanged between the two revisions, with up to 1720 MHz game clocks and up to 1750 MHz boost clocks for the RX 5700 model, and up to 1795 game clocks and up to 1905 MHz boost clocks for the RX 5700 XT model. Both cards feature a software-based "OC mode" that dials up clock-speeds by roughly 70 MHz. ASUS will replace the original TUF Gaming with the new EVO cards at current prices.

DRAM Calculator for Ryzen by 1usmus is the definitive utility to demystify memory overclocking and optimization on AMD Ryzen-powered PCs. It lets you feed in settings you know, and calculates the most optimal related settings (such as latencies), so you get the most from your memory overclock. Version 1.7.0 adds certain memory benchmarks to the utility, including a benchmark for memory bandwidth (reads and writes), and AMD processor inter-core latency tests. The new version also spares you of having to manually input certain current values, by adding the ability to read current memory timings for machines powered by Ryzen 3000-series "Matisse" processors. The new version also adds support for Ryzen Threadripper 3000 "Castle Peak" processor series. Support is also added for SK hynix DJR memory modules. Grab DRAM Calculator for Ryzen from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: DRAM Calculator for Ryzen by 1usmus v1.7.0

One of the emerging trends with tempered glass front faces is the option to have a metal mesh front panel that serves as an airy intake, as more PC builders opt to install radiators there. The MATREXX 55 Mesh 4F from DeepCool follows this trend, and loses the prominent tempered glass front facade to a black mesh intake over the three 120 mm fan mounts. The rest of its design is identical to that of the original. A tinted tempered glass panel continues to dominate the left side. Behind it is a conventional horizontally-partitioned layout. The bottom compartment has room for two 3.5-inch drive bays, Two additional 2.5-inch drives can be mounted along the motherboard tray, which has room for graphics cards up to 37 cm in length, and CPU coolers up to 16.8 cm in height. DeepCool is including four 120 mm fans that have addressable RGB LED illumination; three of which are factory-fitted along the front intakes, and one at the rear exhaust. The company didn't reveal pricing.

SK hynix Inc. today announced financial results for its fiscal year 2019 and fourth quarter ended on December 31, 2019. The consolidated revenue of fiscal year 2019 was KRW 26.99 trillion won while the operating profit amounted to 2.71 trillion won, and the net income 2.02 trillion won. Operating margin for the year was 10% and net margin was 7%.

In order to respond to changing market conditions, SK hynix proactively adjusted both investment and output level last year to maximize business management efficiency. However, amid increasing global economic uncertainty, the increase of inventory burden and conservative purchasing policies on the side of the customers led to a slowdown in demand as well as price falls. As a result, the Company's earnings decreased year-over-year (YoY).

There is a lot to say regarding patent applications and their defense, and the devious ways these can be used as a way to both stifle innovation, competition, and to leech other companies' funds with what is usually described as "patent troll" behavior. Being a seat of technological innovation, The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) registers patents as results of their attachés' work - some of these see the light of day as actual products, but more often than not, the patent rights are used as a way for the institute to receive funds from those that would license their intellectual property.

After entering a legal battle with Apple and Broadcom back in 2016, CalTech has now had its accusation of patent infringement against both companies come to a close, with the jury deciding in favor of the university. The accusation was of both companies deploying WiFi chips which were based on Caltech's patent designs - WiFi chips that were then shipped within millions of iPhones, iPads and MacBooks. As a result, both Apple and Broadcom were ordered to pay a total of $1.1 billion in compensation, with Apple taking the brunt of the decision ($837.8 million) and Broadcom coming in with a thinner slice at $270.2.

EIZO Corporation today announced the release of the FlexScan EV2760, a 27-inch, WQHD (2560 x 1440) monitor with a frameless design for business environments such as trading rooms, back offices, and control rooms. It contributes to higher work efficiency and a smaller eco footprint for sustainable development, which are globally discussed topics.

The FlexScan EV2760 uses a 27-inch LCD panel with 2560 x 1440 native resolution. It implements LED-backlit IPS (in-plane switching) panel technology with 178° wide viewing angles. The typical brightness is 350 cd/m² and the contrast ratio is 1000:1.

Despite Microsoft ending Windows 7 support on January the 14th and declaring it End-Of-Life (EOL), most of the antivirus providers are still providing their services to Windows 7 users. With a large portion of the users unable to switch to the newer and supported OS versions like Windows 10, antivirus providers see a good opportunity to gain new customers that want to protect their PCs from the possible threats. Thanks to the AV-Test report we have a list of antivirus providers that are going to support Windows 7, and it includes all of the big players with a plan to support their software on Windows 7 until 2022. So some of the Windows 7 users unable to upgrade to the newer OS are going to be at least semi-protected against possible vulnerabilities, with exception of course for those found in OS level.

When it comes to the number one source of the threats, the browser, there is some good news there as well. Google plans to support its Chrome browser to at least July 2021, while Mozilla declared no official information about their support plans, however, if they behave as they did with Windows XP and its support ending, your Firefox browser will likely get some more mileage out of it.

Zhaoxin is a brand that makes multi-core 64-bit x86 processors primarily for use in Chinese state IT infrastructure. It's part of the Chinese Government's ambitious plan to make its IT hardware completely indigenous. Zhaoxin's x86-64 CPU cores are co-developed by licensee VIA, specifically its CenTaur subsidiary that's making NCORE AI-enabled x86 processors. The company's KaiXian KX-6780A processor is now commercially available in China to the DIY market in the form of motherboards with embedded processors.

The KaiXian KX-6780A features an 8-core/8-thread x86-64 CPU clocked up to 2.70 GHz, 8 MB of last-level cache, a dual-channel DDR4-3200 integrated memory controller, a PCI-Express gen 3.0 root-complex, and an iGPU possibly designed by VIA's S3 Graphics division, which supports basic display and DirectX 11.1 readiness. The CPU features modern ISA, with instruction sets that include AVX, AES-NI, SHA-NI, and VT-x comparable virtualization extensions. The chip has been fabricated on TSMC 16 nm FinFET process.

Cooler Master, a global leader in designing and manufacturing innovative computer components introduces the MasterAir G200P Low Profile CPU cooler and the MasterFan MF120 Halo ARGB case fans. The MasterAir G200P is a 39.4 mm low-profile CPU cooler designed for small form factor cases and compact PC builds. Built with a powerful 92 mm squared PWM fan to maximize top-down cooling, the G200P features a wide fan speed range that is fine-tuned for maximum airflow, overall cooling performance and silent operation.

The MasterFan MF120 Halo provides an Ideal air-cooling solution for CPU coolers and chassis in-take fans. Built with Air Balance fan blades, the fan includes multiple layers of noise reduction technology that cools components in silence. Featuring dual loop addressable RGB lighting, the MF120 Halo exudes vibrant colors while generating high-pressure airflow.

Nightdive Studios, who are developing a remake of Looking Glass Technologies' famous System Shock, have just released an 87-minute gameplay showcase for the remade version of the game. In it, you'll get to take a look into the combat system, inventory, art and graphics design for the game (whether or not it stays true to your memory of the original is up to you, though).

The game has gone through a sort of development hell, when after garnering more than $1.4 million in crowdfunding, it was announced that the game was being put on hold. That decision was motivated by the developers' arguably overzealous take on the System Shock game, which had them continually build into the core ideas of the game - essentially rendering it as more of a heavily-inspired spiritual successor than the remake they originally envisioned. Changing game development engines from unity to Unreal was also part of the reason for the games' development delay. The game is expected to launch this year, though no specifics on exactly when have been made available. Catch the video after the break.

ASUS has released a ROG-branded riser cable for your graphics card, which will allow you to display it in different configurations on your case. Whether you make a custom solution or have a case that supports vertical graphics cards already, the ROG Strix Riser Cable is the perfect solution. There is no RGB lighting, but ASUS has equipped the ROG Strix Raiser Cable with EMI shielding and special PCB layout to prevent any signal losses from the extended travel distance between your graphics card and your boards' PCIe slot.

The ROG Strix Riser Cable also includes ASUS' patented Safe Slot design, which they employ in their motherboards for securely fastening your graphics cards to your system. The ROG Riser Cable supports PCIe 3.0 x16 signaling, and is available for a relatively hefty €49.99.

According to VideoCardz, ASRock has already listed Intel's upcoming lineup of motherboards in its Polychrome Sync software for controlling the RGB lighting of your motherboard. In the installed program files, ASRock displays several of the models that are a part of Intel's upcoming LGA1200-based Comet Lake-S 10th generation of CPUs. There are a total of nine Z490 motherboards and they are ASRock Z490 AQUA, Phantom Gaming 4, Phantom Gaming 4 SR, Phantom Gaming 6, Pro4, Steel Legend, Taichi, Z490M ITX AC, and Z490M Pro4.

When it comes to the cheaper, non-overclockable H470 chipset, there are two motherboards listed - H470 Steel Legend and H470M ITX AC. Additionally, perhaps one of the most interesting finds is the appearance of W480 chipset meant for workstation solutions. The motherboard using the new chipset is a model named W480 Creator, which should be a new addition to the consumer motherboard lineup.

AMD has just re-released Radeon Software 20.1.3 as WHQL. These drivers are identical to the Adrenalin 20.1.3 Beta drivers posted earlier this month, with the only difference being WHQL certification. It looks like AMD's driver team is hard at work fixing the various issues reported. 20.1.3 WHQL is an important release as it now gives RX 5600 XT owners a WHQL driver — previously they had to resort to beta drivers to power their new purchase.

Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.4 Beta was released just days ago and does include additional changes that aren't integrated in 20.1.3 WHQL yet, because Microsoft's WHQL certification process takes some time. A few days ago we reported that AMD silently patched a driver security issue with 20.1.1 Beta, maybe that's a reason, too, why we're seeing a WHQL version today.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.3 WHQL

Take your first step into the world of liquid-cooling with the new EK-AIO (All-In-One) CPU cooler. Simple to use and easy to install, the EK AIO is a plug-and-play water-cooling solution requiring no assembly or maintenance. Top of its class cooling performance accompanied by fully customizable D-RGB lighting - the EK-AIO is an ideal solution for anyone who requires something more than an ordinary air cooler. The EK-AIO comes in three size variants, each offering different levels of cooling performance.

EK-AIO 120 D-RGB: The single 120 mm radiator version of the EK-AIO is ready to accommodate any mainstream processor on the market while running on its basic settings. It is best used in small form factor PCs where space is limited, where tall air cooling solutions are not an option, but high-performance cooling is still needed. EK-AIO 240 D-RGB: The dual fan EK-AIO with a 240 mm radiator is the perfect all-rounder for standard case sizes. The radiator surface is big enough to combat any mainstream CPU on the market and even has enough headroom for overclocking. An AIO with cooling capacities like this can either provide a super silent PC setup or can help harness the extra performance of an overclocked processor.

Intel Core i5-L16G7 is the first commercial SKU that implements Intel's "Lakefield" heterogenous x86 processor architecture. This 5-core chip features one high-performance "Sunny Cove" CPU core, and four smaller "Tremont" low-power cores, with an intelligent scheduler balancing workloads between the two core types. This is essentially similar to ARM big.LITTLE. The idea being that the device idles most of the time, when lower-powered CPU cores can hold the fort; performance cores kick in only when really needed, until which time they remain power-gated. Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK discovered the first public appearance of the i5-L16G7 in an unreleased Samsung device that has the Userbenchmark device ID string "SAMSUNG_NP_767XCL."

Clock speeds of the processor are listed as "1.40 GHz base, with 1.75 GHz turbo," but it's possible that the two core types have different clock-speed bands, just like the cores on big.LITTLE SoCs. Other key components of "Lakefield" include an iGPU based on the Gen11 graphics architecture, and an LPDDR4X memory controller. "Lakefield" implements Foveros packaging, in which high-density component dies based on newer silicon fabrication nodes are integrated with silicon interposers based on older fabrication processes, which facilitate microscopic high-density wiring between the dies. In case of "Lakefield," the Foveros package features a 10 nm "compute field" die sitting atop a 22 nm "base field" interposer.

People have often asked how to thank us through donations, to show their appreciation for our PC enthusiast content, free software and databases, but we could never find a good mechanism for that. Today we're officially launching our Patreon page, which gives you an easy method to financially support us in a simple way, and get some nifty site-wide features as our own way of saying thank you.

Matrox is pleased to announce Matrox D-Series, a new family of next-generation, multi-display graphics cards designed to power video walls in commercial and critical 24/7 environments. These new single-slot graphics cards drive up to four 4Kp60 displays and can be easily combined to output up to 16 x 4K monitors for high-density video walls in control rooms, enterprises, industries, government, military, pro A/V, digital signage, security, and more. Matrox D-Series graphics cards will be in action at ISE 2020 (booth 11-D120).

Leveraging a custom-built NVIDIA Quadro embedded GPU, D-Series delivers smooth video playback and graphics performance on up to four high-resolution HDMI or DisplayPort displays. OEMs, system integrators, and AV installers can also combine up to four D-Series cards via board-to-board framelock cables, to drive up to sixteen synchronized 4K displays. In addition, D-Series offers HDCP support for playback of protected audio and video content, as well as Microsoft DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5, and OpenCL 1.2 support to run the latest professional applications.

AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su, in her Q4-2019 and FY-2019 earnings call, confirmed that the company debut its second-generation RDNA graphics architecture in 2020. "In 2019 we launched our new architecture in GPUs, it's the RDNA architecture, and that was the Navi-based products. You should expect those will be refreshed in 2020, and we will have our new next-generation RDNA architecture that will be part our 2020 lineup."

Second-gen RDNA, or RDNA2, is expected to leverage the new 7 nm+ (EUV) silicon fabrication process at TSMC, to dial up transistor-counts, clock-speeds, and performance. Among the two anticipated feature additions are VRS (variable rate shading) and possibly ray-tracing. The fabled "big Navi" silicon, a GPU larger than "Navi 10," is also on the cards, according to an earlier statement by Dr Su. More details about these upcoming graphics cards are expected to be put out in March, at the 2020 AMD Investor Day conference.

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the fourth quarter of 2019 of $2.13 billion, operating income of $348 million, net income of $170 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.15. On a non-GAAP basis, operating income was $405 million, net income was $383 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.32. For fiscal year 2019, the company reported revenue of $6.73 billion, operating income of $631 million, net income of $341 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.30. On a non-GAAP basis, operating income was $840 million, net income was $756 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.64.

"2019 marked a significant milestone in our multi-year journey as we successfully launched and ramped the strongest product portfolio in our 50-year history," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We delivered significant margin expansion and increased profitability as we gained market share with our Ryzen and EPYC processors. Our focused execution and the investments we made in our high-performance computing roadmaps position us well for continued growth in 2020 and beyond."

Blizzard today released the system requirements for their remastered version of Warcraft III, Warcraft III: Reforged. The new game sees the inclusion of the original Reign of Chaos campaign and its expansion, the Frozen Throne, amounting to 60 campaign missions. Reworked graphics, four-hours of updated in-game cutscenes and re-recorded voice-overs are paired with rebalanced online play and the addition of social and matchmaking capabilities.

Requirements-wise, it's a light game on its minimum settings for sure: Blizzard says gamers will need an Intel Core i3-530 or AMD Athlon Phenom II X4 910. A mere 4 GB of system RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 or AMD Radeon HD 5750 will be required to power the games' visuals. If you aren't looking for the minimum specs but how good of an experience you'll have, the Recommended specs up the ante: an Intel Core i5-6400 or AMD Ryzen 7 1700X or better are being called for, paired with 8 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon R9 280X.

NZXT, a leading developer of software-powered hardware solutions for PC gaming, today announces the Kraken X-3 and Kraken Z-3 series, the next iterations in NZXT's award-winning line of RGB all-in-one liquid coolers. This new generation of Kraken gives PC builders more options to uniquely customize their builds while providing enhanced cooling performance backed by NZXT's industry-leading warranty.

New to the NZXT Kraken ecosystem, the Z-3 series (available in both 280 mm and 360 mm configurations) is the quintessential centerpiece to the ultimate gaming battlestation. A beautiful 2.36"(60 mm) LCD screen providing unlimited visual customization, powered by NZXT CAM, is capable of displaying vital system health data as well as any custom GIF. With unparalleled aesthetics, the Kraken Z-3 series provides builders the opportunity to express themselves in an all-new way.

1MORE, a globally distributed premium consumer audio company, today announced its new True Wireless ANC In-Ear headphones featuring dual drivers for superior sound quality, two levels of active noise cancelation, pass-through mode and a wireless charging option is now shipping. As the first true wireless headphones pending THX Certification, these earbuds continue to uphold 1MORE's commitment to consumers by providing affordable luxury audio products. The True Wireless ANC headphones are available now on 1MORE.com and Amazon.com for $199.99 MSRP.

European Processor Initiative (EPI) is a Europe's project to kickstart a homegrown development of custom processors tailored towards different usage models that the European Union might need. The first task of EPI is to create a custom processor for high-performance computing applications like machine learning, and the chip prototypes are already on their way. The EPI chairman of the board Jean-Marc Denis recently spoke to the Next Platform and confirmed some information regarding the processor design goals and the timeframe of launch.

Supposed to be manufactured on TSMC's 6 nm EUV (TSMC N6 EUV) technology, the EPI processor will tape-out at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, and it is going to be heterogeneous. That means that on its 2.5D die, many different IPs will be present. The processor will use a custom ARM CPU, based on a "Zeus" iteration of Neoverese server core, meant for general-purpose computation tasks like running the OS. When it comes to the special-purpose chips, EPI will incorporate a chip named Titan - a RISC-V based processor that uses vector and tensor processing units to compute AI tasks. The Titan will use every new standard for AI processing, including FP32, FP64, INT8, and bfloat16. The system will use HBM memory allocated to the Titan processor, have DDR5 links for the CPU, and feature PCIe 5.0 for the inner connection.

Another day, another speculative execution vulnerability found inside Intel processors. This time we are getting a new vulnerability called "CacheOut", named after the exploitation's ability to leak data stored inside CPU's cache memory. Dubbed CVE-2020-0549: "L1D Eviction Sampling (L1Des) Leakage" in the CVE identifier system, it is rated with a CVSS score of 6.5. Despite Intel patching a lot of similar exploits present on their CPUs, the CacheOut attack still managed to happen.

The CacheOut steals the data from the CPU's L1 cache, and it is doing it selectively. Instead of waiting for the data to become available, the exploit can choose which data it wants to leak. The "benefit" of this exploit is that it can violate almost every hardware-based security domain meaning that the kernel, co-resident VMs, and SGX (Software Guard Extensions) enclaves are in trouble. To mitigate this issue, Intel provided a microcode update to address the shortcomings of the architecture and they recommended possible mitigations to all OS providers, so you will be protected once your OS maker releases a new update. For a full list of processors affected, you can see this list. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that AMD CPUs are not affected by this exploit.

Cisco today announced the appointment of Dr. Lisa T. Su, AMD president and CEO, to its board of directors effective today. "Lisa is an accomplished business leader with deep expertise in the semiconductor industry," said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO, Cisco. "We look forward to her contributions to Cisco's board and our business as we continue to develop ground breaking technologies, and a new internet for the 5G era that will help our customers innovate faster than ever before."

Dr. Su, 50, joined AMD in 2012 and has held the position of President and Chief Executive Officer since October 2014. She also serves on AMD's Board of Directors. Previously, Dr. Su served as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Networking and Multimedia at Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., and was responsible for global strategy, marketing and engineering for the company's embedded communications and applications processor business. Dr. Su joined Freescale in 2007 as Chief Technology Officer, where she led the company's technology roadmap and research and development efforts.

With its own silicon fabrication facilities pushed to their capacity limits, Intel is looking for third-party semiconductor foundries to share some of its supply load, and according to a WCCFTech report, its latest partner could be GlobalFoundries, which has a 14 nm-class fab in Upstate New York. If it goes through, the possible Intel-GloFo deal could see contract manufacturing commence within 2020.

GloFo's fab offers 14 nm FinFET and 12LPP, a refinement that's marketed as 12 nm. According to the report, Intel could use GloFo for manufacturing CPU dies, specifically its entry-level chips such as Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron. Intel is also known to shed its own manufacturing workload by contracting foundries for 14 nm core-logic (chipsets). In a bid to maximize 14 nm fab allocation for its CPUs, Intel also started making some of its 300-series chipsets on the older 22 nm process, which goes to show the company's appetite for 14 nm.

AMD today released a new version of their Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition drivers. Version 20.1.4 Beta adds support for Warcraft III: Reforged, with increased performance by up to 11% in some scenarios. Support for "Journey to the Savage Planet" has also been added.

Fixed issues include corruption issues on Red Dead Redemption 2 under Vulkan; crashes on Vulkan-based games when performing a task switch while Radeon Image Sharpening is enabled; system hangs or black screens in GTA V at launch, missing audio in Radeon ReLive recordings, and Integer Scaling not being shown in some Windows 7 hardware configurations. Look after the break for other details of this release. You can grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.4 Beta

Kolink today has launched their Void Midi-Tower, which features a striking design on its front chassis. Through the usage of an infinity mirror and RGB lighting, the angular, V-shaped front panel achieves a very striking look - if the press materials are anything to go by. I have an Oblivion callback with this one - anyone remember the Tet?

The Kolink Void seems to tick many more boxes than a PSU at its price-point should, with support for 5x 120 mm fans (two on the top, one on the back, and two in the front with support for a 240 mm radiator), a PSU shroud, an included 120 mm RGB fan, tempered glass side-panel, steel innards, and support for up to four drives (2x 3.5", 2x 2.5"). Maximum graphics card length stands at 310 mm, maximum CPU cooler height at 160 mm, and PSU length can go up to 180 mm. The Kolink Void is compatible with Micro-ATX, Mini-ATX and ATX motherboards, and is available for £46.99 ($61, approximately).

Today, ASUS launched another additional product in its lineup of portable monitors, called the ROG STRIX XG17AHPE. This portable gaming monitor features a 17.3-inch display with an astonishing 240 Hz refresh rate. Being targeted at "gamers on the go" this monitor is equipped with features to make the user experience as good as possible. Featuring a 17.3-inch IPS panel with a 1080p resolution, the display of this monitor is very decent. Maximum brightness goes up to 300 nits, the contrast ratio is 1000:1, and the panel has 3 ms GtG response time. The Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology used is VESA's Adaptive-Sync.

When it comes to the I/O options, the display is capable of taking a USB-C (that is capable of DisplayPort alternative mode) or Micro HDMI 2.0 as its inputs. There is a built-in ESS Sabre 9118 DAC to transfer digital audio signals to an analog signal for speaker and headphones output. There are also two 1 W stereo speakers integrated into the monitor body. To power the monitor there is a 7800 mAh battery capable of providing 3.5 hours of usage.

Some of the recent news from China is the stuff of science fiction, with the Central Government there locking down entire cities to contain the deadly Coronavirus outbreak there. When cities with 10+ million populations are under lock-down, it's only natural for factories to run out of workforce. According to a ZeroHedge report, the government has reportedly shut down factories owned or operated by big names in the technology and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) industries.

Among these are the ubiquitous Foxconn, which has manufacturing contracts with the biggest silicon valley tech firms for contract-manufacturing their hard-product - including the Apple iPhone; and Samsung Electronics, which makes consumer electronics, home appliances, and certain semiconductor products in China. A third big name in the report is the FMCG and pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. The closure of factories could wreck tech stocks in the coming trading sessions, not to mention possible impact on prices of electronics. As of now, the closure is stipulated for the next 1-2 weeks.

Sharkoon Technologies is an international supplier of PC components and peripherals, offering performance at a reasonable price. Sharkoon presents the Light² 200, an ultra-lightweight gaming mouse of only 62 grams. The mouse has a precise sensor of up to 16,000 DPI, an extremely flexible cable and five mouse feet made of pure PTFE. The Light² 200 is therefore particularly suitable for PC games and applications that require fast and precise operation.

The Light² 200 has a honeycomb structure that extends over the sides, the bottom and the top cover of the mouse. This construction reduces the weight of the mouse to 62 grams, making it one of the lightest gaming mice available. In addition, it has five mouse feet made of pure PTFE as well as a flexible, textile braided cable.

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Akasa rolled out the Vegas Chroma line of top-flow CPU coolers. The coolers come in two variants based on CPU socket types supported. The Vegas Chroma LG supports Intel LGA115x sockets, while the Vegas Chroma AM supports AMD sockets AM4 and AM3+. The cooler's design is an awful lot similar to Intel's stock HSF for desktop processors. An anodized aluminium heatsink with spirally-projecting fins, is ventilated by a 120 mm fan. Airflow from the heatsink ends up ventilating other components around the CPU socket, such as VRM heatsinks, M.2 heatsink, and possibly even memory.

The hydraulic bearing fan takes in 4-pin PWM for its main function, and 3-pin ARGB for the lighting. LEDs are embedded in the hub of the translucent white impeller. In both variants, the fan spins between 500 and 1,800 RPM, pushing up to 51.3 CFM of air, with a noise output of up to 32.5 dBA. Both variants measure 120 mm x 120 mm length and width; but differ in height. The LG variant is 59 mm tall, and the AM variant 63 mm. The LG variant weighs 380 g as it requires a back-plate, while the AM variant tips the scales at 340 g. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Logitech G is excited to release "GHOST," a limited edition white Logitech G PRO Wireless Gaming Mouse. This new color in our Limited Edition collection will be available on Friday, January 24th in the U.S., Canada and U.K for $149.99.

The profits from the sales of "GHOST", as well as the first Limited Edition "PIXEL", are being donated to three charitable organizations dedicated to helping millions of people around the world with accessibility needs: Adaptive Gaming Kit - AbleGamers, the Abilities Research Center at Mount Sinai, and SpecialEffect. These organizations were instrumental in the development of the Logitech G Adaptive Gaming Kit, which launched back in November of 2019. Compatible with the Xbox Adaptive Controller (XAC), the Logitech G Adaptive Gaming Kit lets gamers play the way that's most suitable for them by providing a set of controls that are easily configured to a wide variety of use cases.

Intel's upcoming 400-series desktop chipset will lack support for PCI-Express gen 4.0. The motherboards will stick to gen 3.0 for both the main x16 PEG slots wired to the LGA1200 socket, and general purpose PCIe lanes from the PCH, according to a Tom's Hardware report. It was earlier expected that 400-series chipset motherboards will come with preparation for PCIe gen 4.0, so even if the upcoming 10th gen "Comet Lake" desktop processors lacked gen 4.0 root-complexes, the boards would be fully ready for the new bus standard in 11th gen "Rocket Lake" desktop processors.

10th gen "Comet Lake" desktop processors are built on 14 nm process, and implement Intel's current-gen CPU core design Intel has been implementing since 6th gen "Skylake." It's only with 11th gen "Rocket Lake" that the mainstream desktop platform could see a new CPU core design, with the company reportedly back-porting "Willow Cove" CPU cores to the 14 nm process. "Rocket Lake" is also expected to feature a small Gen12 iGPU with 32 execution units, and a new-gen uncore component that implements PCIe gen 4.0. PCIe gen 4.0 doubles bandwidth over gen 3.0, and while only a handful GPUs support it, the standard is made popular by a new generation of M.2 NVMe SSDs that are able to utilize the added bandwidth to push sequential transfer rates beyond M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 limitations.

EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer based in Europe, is releasing pumpless versions of the Quantum Line pump-reservoir combo units - the EK-Quantum Kinetic FLT D5/DDC Body D-RGB and the EK-Quantum Kinetic TBE 200 D5 Body D-RGB. This means the customer can attach his already owned DDC or D5 pump allowing for a more affordable upgrade process from the previous generation of reservoirs. EK-Quantum products come with sophisticated 5 V D-RGB addressable LEDs which can be controlled through your motherboard RGB control software.

These models are pumpless versions of the EK-Quantum Kinetic FLT pump-reservoir combos. They come in three sizes, 120 mm, 240 mm, and 360 mm. They are mounted from the backside using the 120 mm fan mounting holes and due to having no pump at the back. Each is compatible with both the D5 and DDC pumps and they come with separate mounting kits for your pump of choice, so if you decide to switch the pump model in the future, you can do that without replacing this combo unit.

That headline may come as both a surprise and a non-surprise, thus allowing for an exploration of quantum physics. Ninja Theory has already addressed dementia and mental illness to great success in their highly acclaimed Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (grab it on Steam's Lunar New Year Sale if you haven't yet and are into cinematic storytelling with third-person action included).

Project: MARA is scarce on details right now, apart from teaser trailers which you can find after the break. According to Ninja Theory, the objective is to explore new storytelling mechanics in a highly experimental title. Based on research in the psychology and psychiatric fields, alongside first-hand accounts of people with mental illnesses, the experience aims to explore the ailments of the mind in a grounded way. I for one am eagerly awaiting such a release.

Steam today stated another round of sales on their digital storefront. Dubbed the "Lunar New Year" sale, it is being held in celebration of the Chinese new year, with hundreds of games with discounts that can go anywhere from 10% up to 90% off. You can grab TPU's game of the year, Red Dead Redemption 2, with 20% off. Another (this time, personal) suggestion is to try out Disco Elysium. If you like isometric RPGs, this one, for me, takes the gameof the year for 2020 award, with truly incredible writing, and a true RPG experience that isn't bogged down by the need to include a combat system (and its connected writing requirements and such).

Other offerings are Gears V, available 50% off, Frostpunk (60% off), The Witcher III (if you don't already own it, of course, it's 70% off), Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (-35%), and various others - likely more than you have money to purchase even at their discounted rates.

Monitors being hailed as bezel-free is one of those gimmicks of which you know as soon as you read that listed feature. While some monitors carry bezels as thin as one can imagine, the fact of the matter is that there is always some extra material on the edges of the panel, which will always detract from a multi-monitor experience. Back in 2018, ASUS showcased a Bezel-free kit that would be available for sale. The workings are simple: align your monitors at a certain angle (130º is what ASUS recommends), use the transparent (PET + film) material on bezels that are less than 13 mm, attach the clips to the bottom and top of your monitors, and voila. By the miracle of refraction, your bezels will disappear, while your monitor's images will be extended, seamlessly transitioning between monitors.

This is an interesting solution, and certainly of value for gamers on multi-monitor systems. Keep in mind your screen diagonals will have to be smaller than 27" for this piece of technology to work. The ASUS ROG Bezel-Free Kit is now available at $110 a pop.

As we gear up for another Intel CPU launch with their 10th Gen Comet Lake-S CPUs with up to 10 cores, motherboard manufacturers have to go through the process of getting their products approved through various regulatory requirements. The Eurasian Economic Commission is one which constantly gives little snippets towards the future, and now, MSI motherboards based on Intel's Z490 chipset and LGA 1200 socket have shown up.

Knowing MSI's usual staple of motherboards for each product generation, there aren't many surprises here. The entries refer to these MSI motherboards: Z490-A PRO (Standard ATX); Creator Z490I (Mini-ITX); MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK (Standard ATX); MPG Z490M GAMING EDGE WIFI (Micro-ATX); MPG Z490 GAMING; CARBON WIFI (Standard ATX); MPG Z490 GAMING PLUS (Standard ATX); MEG Z490I UNIFY (Mini-ITX); MEG Z490 UNIFY (Standard ATX); MPG Z490 GAMING EDGE; WIFI (Standard ATX); MEG Z490 ACE (Standard ATX); MEG Z490 GODLIKE (E-ATX). You can expect the GODLIKE to be so in both features and price, as usual, topping out MSI's lineup.

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Acer today debuted its new 12-inch Chromebook, the Acer Chromebook 712, designed specifically for the education environment. The new Chromebook features a premium and durable design, a 12-inch display with 3:2 aspect ratio for better vertical viewing and productivity, and the latest 10th Gen Intel Core processors for first-rate performance.

"Every aspect of the new Acer Chromebook 712 was designed from the ground up with the educational environment in mind," said James Lin, General Manager, Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "In addition to meeting several durability and safety standards, we've also provided extras such as a student-friendly keyboard and the latest processing and Wi-Fi technology, giving students and teachers a powerful tool that will enhance student engagement and learning outcomes."

Red Dead Redemption 2 (PC) is TechPowerUp Game of the Year 2019. Decided purely by popular vote of our readers with close to 13,000 respondents, the Rockstar Games open-world got the most votes among 16 entries that included a large number of commercially, critically, and technically acclaimed PC games released in 2019. The PC version of Red Dead Redemption (or RDR2), had enough technical differentiation from its console releases to not strictly qualify as a "PC port."

RDR2 game took advantage of the increased hardware resources of modern PCs to bring to life higher visual fidelity, support for higher display resolutions, and a suitably improved input mechanic taking advantage of PC input devices. We asked our readers not to judge a game by its technical merits alone, but as an artistic and interactive achievement. It should be a fun game to play foremost, with an intuitive gameplay mechanic, an engaging risk-reward mechanic, and draw the player into its world. For these reasons and more, RDR2 is the pick of the TechPowerUp community, and we as its editors couldn't agree with the popular vote more.

If you haven't updated your AMD Radeon drivers in a while, here's one major reason to. The company secretly patched four major security vulnerabilities affecting Radeon GPUs, in its recent Adrenalin 20.1.1 drivers, with no mention of doing so in its changelog. Talos Intelligence reports four vulnerabilities, which are are chronicled under CVE-2019-5124, CVE-2019-5146, CVE-2019-5147 and CVE-2019-5183. This class of attacks exploits a vulnerability in the AMD Radeon driver file ATIDXX64.dll, which can lead to denial of service or even remote code execution. What makes things much more serious is that this attack vector can be used to exploit the host machine from a VM (tested with VMWare). It even seems possible to trigger the vulnerability from a web page, through WebGL (which allows running 3D applications on a remote website). The vulnerabilities were tested on Radeon RX 550 / 550 Series VMware Workstation 15 (15.5.0 build-14665864) with Windows 10 x64 as guest VM, but there is no reason to assume that the issue is limited to just RX 550 as the AMD shader compiler shares a common code basis for all recent DirectX 12 GPUs.

All vulnerabilities rely on a common attack vector: specially crafted shader code that exploits bugs in the shader compiler. Even though HLSL shader code looks similar to assembly, it actually is a relatively high-level language that gets optimized and compiled by the graphics driver. VMWare's graphics acceleration lets you run 3D graphics in virtual machines, by passing along rendering info to the host GPU and then funneling the output back into the VM. Since the shader code gets compiled using the graphics driver of the host OS, this creates interesting opportunities for attacks.

VIPER GAMING by PATRIOT, a trademarked brand of PATRIOT and a global leader in performance memory, solid-state drives, and flash storage solutions, today is proud to announce the launch of Viper V380 Virtual 7.1 Surround Sound PC Gaming Headset. It delivers crystal clear sound quality and outstanding noise isolation for hardcore gaming and theater-grade audio playback. Featured Hi-Fi grade 53 mm neodymium drivers, the V380 headset brings higher sensitivity and the superior quality of sound with delicate details helping users react faster than their rivals in a game battle.

With the ergonomic concept, V380 headset is housed with hinged over-sized ear cushions and paired with an adjustable protein-leather headband to provide max comfort to gamers who enjoy long gaming matches. An excellent headset is an essential gear for every gamer during the most crucial gaming rounds. Whether the user wants to enjoy a 4K action movie in the late hours or have gaming sessions until dawn, a 7.1 virtual headset is the ideal substitution of the surround sound speakers.

Intel Corporation today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 financial results. The company also announced that its board of directors approved a five percent cash dividend increase to $1.32 per share on an annual basis. The board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.33 per share on the company's common stock, which will be payable on March 1 to shareholders of record on February 7.

"In 2019, we gained share in an expanded addressable market that demands more performance to process, move and store data," said Bob Swan, Intel CEO. "One year into our long-term financial plan, we have outperformed our revenue and EPS expectations. Looking ahead, we are investing to win the technology inflections of the future, play a bigger role in the success of our customers and increase shareholder returns."

Just before the launch of AMD's latest Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards, AMD released a vBIOS update that boosts the GPU clock speed by a few percent margins and increases the GDDR6 memory speed from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps, which is almost a 17% performance increase in memory bandwidth. However, despite the release of these new firmware updates, AMD's add-in-board partners like ASUS and MSI have been cautious about applying the new vBIOS to the existing cards. A YouTube show called the MSI Insider, which is hosted by MSI employees, explains the situation. Due to the GDDR6 memory, which was originally meant as a 12 Gbps chip, when applying the new firmware update to the card can lead to RMA issues with customers.

While some cards are capable of hitting 14 Gbps speeds with the GDDR6 chips, others are not as they were not certified to work at that frequency. Silicon lottery (not the company) of the memory chips plays a big role as the quality of the onboard DRAM will have a large impact on the ability to overclock to new frequencies. That's why MSI released an RX 5600 XT GAMING Z variant with 14 Gbps vBIOS already applied out of the box. ASUS also joined the party and launched the ASUS ROG STRIX TOP graphics card, which is the only 14 Gbps enabled cards in ASUS'es whole lineup. By launching GPU SKUs with 14 Gbps speeds out of the box, manufacturers can guarantee these speeds and not depend on silicon lottery which may cause them a few RMA troubles down the road.

CORSAIR, a world leader in high-performance gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today announced its new models of stunning AMD-powered gaming PCs, the CORSAIR VENGEANCE 6100 Series. Starting with the VENGEANCE 6180 and VENGEANCE 6182, these cutting-edge gaming PCs combine the power of 3rd generation AMD Ryzen processors and AMD Radeon RX 5700 Series graphics with high-quality CORSAIR components, all in a compact cube form factor that's 33% smaller than a standard mid-tower and brimming with fully customizable RGB lighting.

Since launching in 2018, the CORSAIR VENGEANCE family has emerged as one of the most awarded and sought-after gaming PCs on the market thanks to its impressive power, distinctive style, and deeply embedded customizable RGB lighting. Both the CORSAIR VENGEANCE 6180 and 6182 incorporate a liquid-cooled AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU with eight cores and 16 threads, an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB graphics card, and 16 GB of CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4-3200 Memory. Both models are cooled by a CORSAIR Hydro Series H100i RGB PLATINUM Liquid CPU cooler and powered by a CORSAIR RM650 80 PLUS Gold power supply.

CHIPS Alliance, the leading consortium advancing common and open hardware for interfaces, processors and systems, today announced industry leading chipmaker Intel as its newest member. Intel is contributing the Advanced Interface Bus (AIB) to CHIPS Alliance to foster broad adoption.

CHIPS Alliance is hosted by the Linux Foundation to foster a collaborative environment to accelerate the creation and deployment of open SoCs, peripherals and software tools for use in mobile, computing, consumer electronics and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The CHIPS Alliance project develops high-quality open source Register Transfer Level (RTL) code and software development tools relevant to the design of open source CPUs, SoCs, and complex peripherals for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and custom silicon.

ASUS updated its AMD socket sTRX4 motherboard series with the new ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha, a slight step-up from the original ROG Zenith II Extreme that debuted with AMD's 3rd gen Ryzen Threadripper family. Although ASUS' entire sTRX4 motherboard lineup will support the upcoming 64-core Threadripper 3990X, the new Extreme Alpha is better designed for overclocking it. The new board looks visually identical to the original ROG Zenith II Extreme, and has an almost-identical feature-set, with the only difference being the CPU VRM solution. The new ROG Zenith II Extreme Alpha implements a 16-phase CPU VRM with Infineon TDA21490 power-stages replacing the TDA21472 power-stages on the original ROG Zenith II Extreme (possibly increase output current or I-out from 70 A to 90 A). This could marginally increase the product price. The rest of the feature-set is identical.

Back at CES, at the FSP booth, we spied an inconspicuous-looking PSU with a curious 10-pin connector in place of the 24-pin ATX. The FSP500-30AKB turned out to be the first public exhibit of a the pure 12-Volt PC power supply standard being pushed by Intel, which is called "ATX12VO," which abbreviates Advanced Technology eXtended 12-Volt Only. According to the specification, the PSU only puts out +12 V and 12 Vsb voltage domains, and does away with the 5 V, 5 Vsb, and 3.3 V domains. This greatly simplifies the design of PSUs, as PCs of today don't use too many power-hungry 5 V or 3.3 V devices (such as half-a-dozen mechanical hard drives). The PC will still need 5 V for interfaces such as USB, but VRM on the motherboard will be responsible for DC-to-DC switching of 12 V to those lower-voltage domains. It's also likely that the motherboard will now put out a handful SATA power connectors.

Intel could debut ATX12VO within 2020 via its next-generation desktop platform, which features a 10-pin connector instead of 24-pin. It remains to be seen if the company could help the transition from current PSUs to the new standard by having its motherboard partners include a 24-pin to 10-pin adapter of some sort. In addition to the 10-pin connector, ATX12VO PSUs will put out two other purely-12 V connector types: 8-pin/4+4 pin EPS and 6+2 pin PCIe power. The EPS connector powers the CPU VRM, while the PCIe connector powers add-on cards, such as graphics cards. 4-pin Molex connectors could also be put out, but those will only feature 12 V pins (the 5 V pins will be absent).

EK Water Blocks, the EU-based liquid cooling gear manufacturer, would like to inform its key partners about the new version of the already launched EK-Quantum Vector Dual Evo RTX 2070/2080 D-RGB block. This water block will now be available in the Nickel + Acetal version as well.

The EK-Quantum Vector Dual Evo RTX 2070/2080 D-RGB water blocks are specifically engineered for ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 2070, 2080, 2070 SUPER and 2080 SUPER graphics cards. The water block itself uses the signature EK single slot slim look, and it covers the entire PCB length. This sophisticated cooling solution will transform your powerful ASUS graphics card into a minimalistic, elegant piece of hardware with accented D-RGB LED lighting.

Matrox today announced a collaboration with NVIDIA for the development of a new range of multi-display embedded graphics cards purpose-built for high-density video walls. Leveraging NVIDIA's industry-renowned GPU technology, Matrox will design graphics innovations powered by a custom-built Quadro embedded GPU to accelerate graphics-intensive video wall applications in commercial and 24/7 critical environments.

"Matrox is thrilled to work alongside NVIDIA, the leader in GPU computing, to bring to market a new standard of high-density video walls," said David Chiappini, executive vice president of research and development at Matrox. "This collaboration is yet another example of our commitment to expanding our video wall portfolio while customers continue to benefit from our graphics expertise, world-class engineering, dedicated technical support, and long product life cycles."

Intel Wednesday rolled out its NUC 8 Pro "Provo Canyon" line of compact desktops targeted at businesses. These NUCs are fit for enterprise client desktop role as some of the models feature Intel vPro, and are powered by 8th generation Core "Whiskey Lake-U" processors. Leading the pack is the NUC8v7PN, powered by a Core i7-8665U processor, followed by the NUC8v5PN powered by Core i5-8365U, and the NUC8i3PN, powered by Core i3-8145U. The NUC8v7PN and NUC8v5PN offer Intel vPro support. All three come in two chassis types, H and K. The H chassis features a 2.5-inch drive bay with SATA 6 Gbps interface, and measures 117 mm x 112 mm x 53 mm, while the compact K chassis lacks the 2.5-inch drive bay, and is 37 mm tall. The three are also available in bare board form-factors, so you can use your own NUC-compatible cases.

Connectivity features common to all three are dual HDMI 2.0b (HDCP 2.2) ports with in-built CEC; two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB of dual-channel memory; one Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps) port at the rear panel that includes DisplayPort 1.3 and USB 3.1 gen 2 wiring; and four USB type-A ports, from which three are USB 3.1 gen 2, and one USB 2.0. Networking connectivity includes 802.11ac through an Intel Wireless AC-9560 vPro WLAN card (NUC8v7PN and NUC8v5PN only) or Wireless AC-9560 (NUC8i3PN), and one 1 GbE interface driven by Intel i219-LM controller. The audio is completely HDMI-based, there are no analog jacks. The three are certified for Windows 10 IoT Enterprise and Windows Server 2019.

Intel Corporation announced today that at the company's Jan. 15 board meeting Andy D. Bryant stepped down as chairman and the board elected lead independent director Dr. Omar Ishrak to succeed Bryant as an independent chairman, effective immediately. Intel also announced that Alyssa Henry was elected to Intel's board. Her election marks the seventh new independent director added to Intel's board since the beginning of 2016.

Bryant will remain on the board through the end of Intel's 2020 annual stockholders' meeting. He had previously notified the board in March 2019 that he did not intend to stand for re-election at this year's meeting. Bryant made the decision to leave the role now in order to facilitate an effective transition.

In a 2019 earnings call ASML, a Dutch company that is currently the world's largest semiconductor lithography supplier has been talking about the company's records and what awaits them in the future. In its 2019 earning report, ASML was forecasting the delivery of as much as 35 EUV systems in 2020. It is not a forecast per se, but rather a known fact since factories order their equipment months before they need to use it. Having previously delivered 26 EUV systems in 2019, the plan for the coming years is to boost the EUV system shipments by as much as 40% yearly. With plans to ship between 45 and 50 EUV systems in the year 2021, AMSL sees a strong revenue gain in the coming years. What is driving the demand for these machines is the use of ever-smaller semiconductor manufacturing nodes. Even at 7 nm, there is almost a need to use EUV lithography, and as you drop in size the lithography challenge becomes real, the use of EUV becomes a necessity.

ABKONCORE is pleased to announce the availability of the ASTRA AM6 cost effective gaming mouse. This rigor PC gaming mouse is ambidextrous, ergonomic and simply cool. The addition of the RGB function to this niche mouse makes it even cooler. Colorful 16.8 million RGB led glaring around the mouse. Customize your own send of gaming by choosing one of the 4 pre-set flash modes to you own liking. The ASTRA AM8 is provides comfort due to the outline natural human grip design and symmetrical shape for both right and left hand use. This way you can switch between using the mouse left and right to release fatigue when entered in long gaming sessions.

The new ASTRA is featured with 4-Step sensitivity adjustment to maximum 3200 DPI. Either to increase or decrease the pointer speed for any specific game you're playing. PDI can be set without software, just by the push of a button. The optical precision sensor enables you to control the mouse with high accuracy and aim faster than you opponents.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the 2-bay TS-251D NAS. Powered by an Intel J4005 dual-core processor, the TS-251D can be used with QNAP's smart AI photo management application, QuMagie, which integrates AI image recognition to group similar photos together in album "People", "Things" and "Places". The 4K media transcoding and streaming capabilities of the TS-251D brings users an excellent and satisfying cross-device multimedia experience. The TS-251D also provides a PCIe slot for expanding its core functionality.

Powered by an Intel Celeron J4005 dual-core 2.00 GHz processor (burst up to 2.7 GHz), DDR4 RAM (up to 8 GB), one Gigabit LAN port, and supports SATA 6 Gbps drives. The TS-251D provides dependable read/write speeds and Intel AES-NI 256 hardware-accelerated encryption to secure sensitive and confidential data on the NAS. The TS-251D also supports snapshots, allowing users to quickly recover data in the event of accidental deletion/modification or ransomware attack.

NZXT, a leading developer of software-powered hardware solutions for PC gaming, today announces the NZXT RGB & Fan Controller. Powered by NZXT CAM, the RGB & Fan Controller gives users the tools to customize lighting and fan profiles to perfection.

The NZXT RGB & Fan Controller was created for builders to easily and affordably add digital RGB and fan control to their system controlled via NZXT CAM. Any chassis can now have the same enhanced capabilities found in the i versions of NZXT award-winning H Series cases. Bringing beauty to any battlestation is simpler than ever with two RGB lighting and fan channels that are compatible with all NZXT lighting accessories such as LED strips, underglow, cable combs, and AER RGB 2 fans. Additionally, three dedicated 10 W fan channels are included, giving users direct control of their airflow performance digitally.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products, including network attached storage and direct attached storage, is proud to share with content creators and multimedia professionals its lineup of Thunderbolt 3-equipped, direct-attached storage solutions for faster video and data access. Utilizing the power of Thunderbolt 3 which allows 40 Gbps of data transfer, the TerraMaster TD Thunderbolt 3 is a plug-and-play solution for personal usage all the way to small production needs. Perfect for Mac Pro media professionals and compatible devices which needs large storage but high-speed access in a portable package.

Thunderbolt 3 is the latest generation of connectivity technology that utilizes 40 Gbps of bandwidth to connect directly with the computer. Thunderbolt technology also allows connecting multiple devices simultaneously via daisy chain allowing you to scale or interconnect your Thunderbolt devices from just one source. The TerraMaster D2 Thunderbolt 3 is a 2-bay drive supporting professional grade RAID0 or RAID1 for your choice of improved performance or data redundancy.

GIGABYTE late-Tuesday released a video BIOS update for its Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC graphics card (model: GV-R56XTGAMING OC-6GD). The new FA0 video BIOS increases TGP of the card to a massive 180 W (up from 150 W original spec), gaming clocks up to 1670 MHz, boost clocks up to 1750 MHz, and memory clocks up to 14 Gbps (GDDR6-effective), up from 12 Gbps. Gigabyte's BIOS update package for the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC includes a Windows-based GUI updater that's a lot easier to use than manually updating the BIOS using ATIWinFlash. Grab the update package from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: GIGABYTE RX 5600 XT Gaming OC New FA0 BIOS Update

PowerColor joins many other AMD Radeon partners in releasing enhanced video BIOS updates for its Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards to implement AMD's updated specification for the RX 5600 XT that increases clock-speeds and power-limits for the SKU, making it competitive against NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2060. PowerColor saves its users the hassle (and risk) of updating their cards using bare ROM image files and ATIWinFlash, by automating the process via batch files. Unfortunately, PowerColor's updater appears DOS-based, and involves having to boot your PC to DOS and running the batch file.

Eligible models for PowerColor's RX 5600 XT Unleashed BIOS are the RX 5600 XT Red Devil (model: AXRX 5600XT 6GBD6-3DHE/OC) and the RX 5600 XT Red Dragon (AXRX 5600XT 6GBD6-3DHR/OC). Both cards offer the dual-BIOS feature, in which one of the BIOS is marked "OC" for the best performance, and the other "Silent," for the lowest noise levels. You're expected to run the updater once for each BIOS. Follow the instructions in the PDF file included with the BIOS update package, which includes instructions to make a DOS bootable media.

DOWNLOAD: PowerColor RX 5600 XT Unleashed BIOS

AMD's last minute specifications change of the Radeon RX 5600 XT means that early adopters of the card could be on the older (slower) spec. The new specification is being distributed by video BIOS updates. The likes of ASRock and Sapphire have released 1-click updaters; while MSI is distributing it through its centralized MSI Dragon Center app.

MSI Dragon Center unifies the functionality of tuning (that of Afterburner), with Mystic Light (RGB LED control), and Live Update (software updates) into one interface. In addition to looking up video driver updates, Dragon Center can now fetch and update the video BIOS of your Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card. Among the eligible cards are the RX 5600 XT Gaming X and RX 5600 XT Gaming.

DOWNLOAD: MSI Dragon Center

Sapphire today released BIOS updates for its sole Radeon RX 5600 XT product, the Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT OC Edition. The updated BIOS enhances performance by significantly increasing engine and memory clock speeds and power-limits, resulting in an up to 10 percent performance improvement. This stems from AMD's last-minute specifications update for the RX 5600 XT in a bid to make it competitive against the GeForce RTX 2060. Much like ASRock, Sapphire has automated the BIOS update process by shipping its BIOS ROMs with the flashing tool and batch files.

Since the Pulse RX 5600 XT OC Edition ships with dual-BIOS, one of which is the out-of-the-box performance BIOS, and the other is a 'quiet' BIOS, you're expected to update both, and there are separate Windows batch files to run after manually switching the between the ROMs. Sapphire's BIOS update package includes a PDF file with detailed instructions on how to update each ROM. The batch files spare you of having to manually work the various CLI arguments of the flashing tool. Look for the "New VBIOS Update" tab on the card's product page the Sapphire website.

As you may have heard, AMD's decision to revise the specifications of its Radeon RX 5600 XT in the last minute, has thrown its board partners and end-users into chaos and confusion. Inventories of cards with the original specs have already shipped, and cards available in the market today most likely stick to the old spec. The updated spec is being distributed by board partners in the form of a video BIOS update. ASRock released updated BIOS for its three factory-overclocked RX 5600 XT graphics cards, and has gone a step ahead in making it convenient for end-users to update their BIOS, through a 1-click updater.

ASRock's RX 5600 XT video BIOS updater consists of an executable and a Windows batch file. Clicking on the batch file with administrator privileges launches the automated updater. It frees you of having to use the CLI-based ATIWinFlash with a bare flash ROM image, getting all the arguments right, and having to cross your fingers. Grab the BIOS updater specific to your ASRock-made RX 5600 XT graphics card from the links below.

DOWNLOAD: ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 | ASRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D2 | ASRock RX 5600 XT Challenger D

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 Intel's position in the server and HEDT market, which has led to recent price-cuts and tightening of Intel's Xeon line of CPUs - as well as 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ASUS is keeping its Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card lineup trim, with just two SKUs, both of which are factory-overclocked. The lineup is led by the ROG Strix Radeon RX 5600 XT O6G, while its affordable sibling is the TUF Gaming X3 Radeon RX 5600 XT EVO. ASUS hasn't finalized the clock-speeds for either, as it's rumored that AMD is working with its partners to increase them across the board, to make the RX 5600 XT competitive against the GeForce RTX 2060. Both ASUS RX 5600 XT graphics cards are largely based on its RX 5700-series board designs as the RX 5600 XT is carved from the same 7 nm "Navi 10" ASIC.

The ROG Strix RX 5600 XT O6G features the company's premium triple-slot DirectCU III cooling solution with three Axial-Tech fans, idle fan-stop, plenty of RGB bling on the cooler shroud and metal back-plate, and a high-grade VRM solution that pulls power from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The TUF Gaming X3 RX 5600 XT EVO, on the other hand, also features a triple-slot design, the TUF X3 cooling solution with three Axial-Tech fans (the one in the middle is smaller than the others); idle fan-stop, and a metal back-plate. This card pulls power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, unlike the ROG Strix.

ASUS announced ASUS Mini PC PN62, an ultra-compact computer that delivers powerful performance for a wide variety of home and business applications. Featuring the latest 10th Generation Intel Core processors and support for high-speed 2666 MHz DDR4 memory, Mini PC PN62 is ready to take on demanding workloads, yet its diminutive size takes up minimal space on a desk and makes it suited for applications where traditional PCs won't fit, such as digital-signage applications or in a home theater.

WiFi 6 (802.11ax) networking ensures stable, high-speed data transfers, even in crowded networking environments, and a USB-C port with Power Delivery (PD) supports data transfer, power and DisplayPort functionality over a single cable. Mini PC PN62 also features an infrared (IR) sensor and supports Microsoft Cortana via dual-array front microphones for convenient voice control of applications.

Intel NUC 11 Extreme is the spiritual successor to the "Hades Canyon" and "Skull Canyon" NUC, and implements the company's next-generation 10 nm+ "Tiger Lake" processor. Codenamed "Panther Canyon," the NUC 11 Extreme represents a line of ultra-compact desktops with serious computing power, bringing together the company's highest-performance CPU cores and iGPUs. The "Tiger Lake-U" SoC powering the NUC 11 Extreme will reportedly be configured with a 28-Watt TDP, and will come in Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 variants.

The "Tiger Lake-U" processor is expected to combine next-generation "Willow Cove" CPU cores with an iGPU based on Intel's new Xe graphics architecture, in what could be the first commercial outing for both. The NUC 11 Extreme "Panther Canyon" will also support up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory over SO-DIMMs, an M.2-2280 slot with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps wiring, and option for Intel Optane M10 cache memory. On the connectivity front, and Intel AX-201 WLAN card provides 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5. A 2.5 GbE wired interface will also be available. These will also be among the first NUCs to feature front- and rear-Thunderbolt ports (possibly next-gen 80 Gbps given that the platform implements PCIe gen 4.0). The NUC 11 Extreme "Panther Canyon" is expected to launch some time in the second half of 2020.

Visiting Bitspower at CES or Computex is a real adventure of sorts in terms of not knowing what to expect. Last year, for example, we were greeted to LN2 pots of all things, in addition to new blocks and fans that made their way to the retail market over the subsequent months. It was also interesting to take a look back at the concept of the Premium Summit M CPU block from last year, knowing what it turned out now. This year, the company hosted us again at CES and had a large hotel suite full of products- refreshes, and new alike. We take a look at their offerings here, and be sure to read past the break for more.

The very first thing we saw was a distribution plate/case hybrid, which Bitspower wants to bring out as a test bench case later this year. There have been other such executions come out recently, including some at CES from other companies, and this is a natural extension of the distro plate development that has caught the mind of several custom watercooling companies for one reason or another. This particular version uses two Xylem DDC pumps with Bitspower heatsinks, and has four large feet to prop up the finished build horizontally for testing/display. Bitspower expects to introduce the finalized version at Computex later this year, and are seeking feedback from our readers on what features they would like to see here.

AMD has allegedly changed the specifications of its Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card through a BIOS update being pushed to manufacturers, according to an HKEPC report. According to the report, AMD has increased clock-speeds of the RX 5600 XT to 1615 MHz gaming and 1750 MHz boost, versus 1375 MHz gaming and 1560 MHz on AMD's CES press-event slides detailing the card. Confirmation of this comes from the product page of Sapphire's RX 5600 XT Pulse graphics card, which doesn't bear any "OC" marking in either the product name or box art, but yet has an updated specs tab, referencing the new clock speed.

Increased GPU (engine) clocks isn't all, Sapphire also increased memory clock speeds from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps (a 15% increase in memory bandwidth). Also, the typical board power ("power consumption") value has gone up from 150 W to 160 W, indicating a possible power-limit increase. These last-minute changes could probably significantly change the performance numbers of the RX 5600 XT in a bid to make it more competitive to the GeForce RTX 2060. Earlier today, it was reported that NVIDIA formally cut prices of the RTX 2060 down to $299, which would put it within $20 of the RX 5600 XT with its launch price of $279.

Humble Bundle, a company that combines a lot of games into a bundle, and then sells them at a much lower price than their combines value is, is now creating a Fire Relief Bundle. The Fire Relief Bundle is a game bundle that has a goal of supporting charity, specifically, it aims to aid the country of Australia, whose lands have been devastated by fires lately. For one time purchase of 25 or more, depending on if you want to donate more, Humble Bundle will donate 100% of the funds to Australia and help them recover from the terrible fires. In return, you will get 27 game titles that are worth $400+ combined. Among some of the titles are games like Feather, Satelite Reign, Hollow Knight, Armello, and Euro Truck Simulator 2 with the Australian Paint Jobs pack. You can check out the complete bundle here.

NVIDIA late Thursday released the GeForce 442.01 Hotfix driver. A hotfix driver is that which is pushed out to correct glaring bugs with the driver immediately, and tend to have much shorter change-logs than beta or WHQL releases. The driver fixes a bug with "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" streaming using StreamLabs OBS randomly stopping. Also fixed is a bug with "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine," where a game-crash is observed in a specific cutscene. Lastly a minor stutter in SLI machines with G-Sync enabled has been fixed. The driver is otherwise identical to GeForce 441.87.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 442.01 Hotfix

When EVGA brought the $299 GeForce RTX 2060 KO graphics card to CES, we knew they couldn't pull it off without NVIDIA's blessings. With AMD claiming that its upcoming $279 Radeon RX 5600 XT outclasses the entire GeForce GTX 1660-series, including the GTX 1660 Super and range-topping GTX 1660 Ti, NVIDIA had to do something, and that something is a formal price-cut on its GeForce RTX 2060 down to USD $299.

When it launched a year ago in January 2019, the GeForce RTX 2060 commanded a $349 price-point, which was largely unfazed by AMD's introduction of the Radeon RX 5700 at the same price. The RX 5700 is faster than the RTX 2060, but NVIDIA probably counted on ray-tracing to sell the card. The new RX 5600 XT changes the landscape dramatically, if AMD's performance claims hold true. The entire GTX 16-series is outclassed at a sub-$300 price matching that of the top GTX 1660 Ti part, and there's no ray-tracing hardware to bail them out, either. NVIDIA could cut prices, but those would pancake the already cluttered product-stack. The only other option (which NVIDIA took), was to cut prices of the RTX 2060. It remains to be seen what AMD's next move is. With the RX 5700-series, it pulled off a last-minute price-cut ahead of launch.

Applying thermal interface material (TIM) properly is a simple task that is under-documented or sometimes even misrepresented by the press. A bad application harms, rather than help your thermals. Their application varies from either the "pea drop" method, where you squeeze the TIM syringe or sachet to put out a tiny pea size blob onto your chip, letting the pressure from the heatsink spread the TIM out; or using an included spatula or plastic card to spread the TIM out to a very thin film. Of course when minors have plastic cards and syringes lying around in their rooms, parents sometimes get the wrong idea.

Cooler Master, in a tweet confirmed that it redesigned its TIM packaging to address exactly this: that TIMs supplied in syringes that look and function identical to medical syringes, make parents think their kids are doing drugs. "We didn't change the shape of the syringe to make applying thermal paste a lot easier, but because we we're getting tired of having to explain parents that their kid isn't using drugs," reads the Cooler Master statement. The new packaging by Cooler Master looks closer to a highlighter or Play Doh tube than it does a medical syringe. It still uses a syringe-like manual piston to dispense TIM, but the nozzle is wide and flattened to put out a layer of TIM directly on your chip. It's no longer round, and you can no longer attach injection needles. This nozzle also takes away the need for plastic cards or spatulas. The design, however, has a downside: the "pea drop" application is impossible, and a somewhat sub-optimal method is being forced upon users. Did Cooler Master just give in to pressure from an uninformed section of the market? Could a printed disclaimer on a conventional round syringe have helped instead? Tell us in the comments below.

Sharkoon Technologies is an international supplier of PC components and peripherals, offering performance at a reasonable price. For the start of the New Year, Sharkoon now introduces four new accessories for gamers. These products are: Sharkoon Backpack, SKILLER SGP2 XXL mouse mat, X-Rest ALU headset stand and the ELITE SHARK WR200 wrist rest.

The Sharkoon Backpack is made of high-quality 600D polyester, which is characterized by a high degree of scuff and abrasion resistance. Apart from being robust, the material is water-repellent and easy to clean. And with a volume of 16 liters as well as a variety of compartments and pockets, the backpack offers enough space for notebooks, valuables or simply everything needed for short trips. For mobile devices such as notebooks or tablets, padded compartments are available. These have a Velcro strap to keep the devices securely inside. A hidden pocket on the back panel protects documents and other things from unwanted hands. The pocket on the shoulder strap and the compartment on the top of the backpack both enable easier handling and quicker access to cash or EC cards. There is also a special space for a power bank in the backpack. This can be connected via an integrated extension cable which has a type A USB plug. Thus, smartphones or other compatible devices can be conveniently charged via the USB port on the outside. The Sharkoon Backpack is available at a recommended retail price of 34.99 euros.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced several promotions and a new hire to strengthen its senior leadership team to further enable the company's continued growth.

AMD announced four senior vice president promotions:

• Nazar Zaidi to senior vice president of Cores, Server SoC and Systems IP Engineering with continued responsibility for leading the development of leadership CPU cores, server SoCs and system IP.
• Andrej Zdravkovic to senior vice president of Software Development, leading the teams responsible for all aspects of AMD software strategy and development across AMD graphics, client and data center products.
• Spencer Pan to senior vice president of Greater China Sales and president of AMD Greater China, with responsibility for leading all sales and go-to-market activities for AMD in Greater China and expansion of strategic partner and customer relationships in the region.
• Jane Roney to senior vice president of Business Operations, responsible for aligning and scaling critical business processes across the company to support growth and help ensure consistent execution.

CES might be over, but our coverage from the event continues. TechPowerUp prides itself on visiting a lot of brands, big and small, and bringing to you our first-hand account of everything new. EK Waterblocks, or simply EKWB henceforth, had a large room in the Mandalay Bay with a big open window spanning the room, which made for challenging photography, but a well-laid out open plan made it easy for us to go over the various product segments they had to display. This post will go briefly over them, but keep in mind that nearly all products showcased do not have set retail availability info just yet.

The very first thing that caught our eyes was their new line of AIO cooling solutions, now simply called EK-AIO. These are the successors to the EK-MLC Phoenix, and the EK-Predator from before, both of which did not really change the status quo of the pre-filled AIO CPU cooling market. EK hopes that the new series, of which again they are working to finalizing the design before committing to a release window and pricing information, will change this. As with most of their new products, the EK-AIO coolers integrate RGB support with 9 dRGB LEDs in the pump/block and more on the EK-Vardar RGB fans that are used on the radiator itself. The EK-AIO series is planned to come in 120/240/360 mm radiator size options, with 1/2/3 fans respectively. Read past the break for more from the Slovenian watercooling brand.

CD Projekt Red has come out on Twitter with an important announcement regarding the release of their highly-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 game: a five month delay which pushes release to September, instead of the previously-set launch on April 16th. CD Projekt Red said that "We are currently at a stage where the game is complete and playable, but there's still work to be done. Night City is massive - full of stories, content, and places to visit, but due to the sheer scale and complexity of it all, we need more time to finish playtesting, finishing and polishing. We want Cyberpunk 2077 to be our crowning achievement for the generation and postponing launch will give us the precious months we need to make the game perfect." Launching so late into the year does pose questions regarding launch on the next-gen Xbox Series X and PS5 systems; but the developer has already told us the game won't be available on those on launch day.

Game delays are usually taken with disappointment. This editor, however, would like to point out that CD Projekt Red has a proven track record in delivering genre-defining experiences. The Witcher 3 was such for RPGs and fantasy settings; the developer is certainly aiming for no less than the same effect with Cyberpunk 2077 and its FPS gameplay. I, for one, don't mind having a delay on such a game. I'd much rather have it in my hands perfectly polished rather than risk a new Mass Effect: Andromeda situation that could risk killing a new franchise and game world - especially one so interesting as that of Cyberpunk 2077. Patience is a virtue. I believe CD Projekt Red will do everything in their power to make it a game worth our while.

AOC today launched two new interestingly specced and priced monitors. The CQ27G2U and Q27G2U are basically the same monitor with only one distinguishing feature: the CQ27G2U features a 1500R curved panel while the Q27G2U is a flat panel monitor. Apart from that, specs are identical between the two. There's a 27" VA panel with 2560 x 1440 (QHD) resolution; 144 Hz refresh rate and 1 ms response time. there's FreeSync support, albeit in a limited range of 48 Hz through 144 Hz, so these monitors won't really help you keep fluidity in lower frames per second.

Maximum brightness of the panels is pretty low at 250 nits, and color coverage is good enough for office work or gaming at 120% sRGB, 90% Adobe RGB and 85% NTSC coverage. Being a VA panel, contrast ratio stands at a respectable 3000:1. I/O is taken care of by 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, and there's also a 4x USB 3.0 hub, Headphone out and 2x 2 W speakers also make an appearance. The non-curved Q27G2U will be available for $299, while its curved sibling, the CQ27G2U, will retail for $20 more at $319.

The RACING B450GT3 motherboard is built for gamers that require high-performance on a micro-ATX form factor. Fitted with the B450 chipset that supports AMD's Ryzen 3000 Series processors. The RACING B450GT3 motherboard is packed with loads of functions and features that are found in most high-end gaming AM4 motherboards and is designed with BIOSTAR's signature premium black Racing themed PCB style.

The RACING B450GT3 supports 4-DIMM DDR4-1866/2133/2400/2666/2933/3200 (OC) with up to 64G maximum capacity, 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port (10 Gb/s), 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A port (10 Gb/s), 1x M.2 (32 Gb/s) and 6x SATA3 connectors. Gamers will also appreciate the Hi-Fi 7.1ch HD Audio for truly immersive sound quality that is enabled with the Realtek ALC1150 7.1-Channel Audio, Dual BIOS for auto-recovery, and Iron Slot Protection for a much more stable and durable port composition.

This year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) that will take place in March is forming to become a very interesting one. According to the GDC schedule platform, Intel is having a presentation about its upcoming Xe graphics card architecture. Saying that "Intel's brand new Xe Architecture, has been teased for a while, and is scheduled for release later this year! This update brings a significant compute, geometry and throughput improvements over today's widely used Gen9 and Gen11 graphics.", Intel is giving us a slight hint of what is to come.

Presented by Intel's senior developer relations engineer, Antonie Cohade, the talk will include an in-depth look of the Xe hardware architecture and its implementations. Said to introduce "powerful new features", the talk about Xe graphics should include a mention of the latest trend in the world of 3D graphics, ray tracing, and show us what are the capabilities of the new GPU architecture.

Fortron's consumer brand, FSP, brought a handful new power products to CES 2020, besides its already launched CMT710 premium gaming chassis, the Hydro G Pro premium modular PSU from mid-2019, and Dagger Pro SFX PSUs. The inconspicuous-looking FSP500-30AKB looks like a cheap OEM-included PSU with rear 80 mm exhaust, which comes included with your case, and which you immediately discard. Only that it's possibly the most innovative thing FSP brought to CES. This PSU is being designed for Intel's upcoming PC spec that does away with the 5 V, 5 Vsb, and 3.3 V power domains altogether.

The pure-12 V PSU has only two domains: +12 V and +12 Vsb. What this means is a goodbye to the bulky 24-pin ATX power connector. The PSU only feeds 12 V to your motherboard, which uses onboard VRM and DC-to-DC switching to put out the lower voltage domains, including power for your SATA storage devices. The 24-pin connector is effectively reduced to a new 10-pin connector that only has 12 V and 12 Vsb cabling. Other cables include 8-pin EPS connectors for your CPU VRM, and 6+2 pin PCIe connectors for your graphics cards. EPS and PCIe power are purely 12 V-based standards already. The 5-pin connector is less than half as thick as your 24-pin connector, and 2 pins wider than an EPS connector. Some of the more premium PSUs may user thicker gauge wires for this connector.

Razer had an interesting outing at CES 2020. There were no new PC gaming peripherals, other than Star Wars "storm trooper" co-branded Kraken, Goliathus, and Atheris; but three interesting exhibits. To begin with, Razer Kishi is an adjustable, split game controller for smartphones. The controller's two ends (meant for your left and right hands, wrap around the two ends of your smartphone. You get two analog thumbsticks, a D-pad, four action buttons, and four triggers. The Razer Gamepad app lets you map the controller to your smartphone over Bluetooth, and provides custom button mapping. The company also showed off Arctech line of smartphone sleeves that are designed to dissipate heat.

Having made its mark as a leading gaming notebook vendor, Razer is turning its attention to pre-built gaming desktops, and we saw one of its first creations, the Tomahawk SFF. Much like Apple, Razer has a serious focus on form as much as function, and that's evident with the aluminium CNC precision-milled chassis with tempered glass side-panels, and a size that's fit both for desks and the living room.

The ThinkPad brand from Lenovo has always represented serious business on the move, right from its IBM origins. At CES 2020, the company unveiled what is possibly the best foldable PC design we've seen till date, the ThinkPad X1 Fold. The X1 Fold is a 13.3-inch tablet that folds perfectly along the middle to either a book-like orientation, or as a laptop, in which the top half becomes the display, and the bottom half your keyboard of whichever possible layout. If a touchscreen keyboard doesn't appeal to you, you can dock an accessory that has a physical keyboard and trackpad.

Under the hood of the X1 Fold is an Intel "Lakefield" Hybrid x86 SoC that combines high-performance and high-efficiency x86 cores and dynamically allots workload to them while power-gating on the fly (a la ARM big.LITTLE). When it comes out mid-2020 (likely a Computex 2020 launch), the ThinkPad X1 Fold will be driven by Windows 10X, a new operating system Microsoft is designing specifically for dual-screen mobile computing devices. The Flex 5G is Lenovo's first business notebook with an integrated 5G modem (in addition to Wi-Fi 6), so you can enjoy high-speed mobile Internet on the move. Lastly, we spotted the Lenovo Ducati notebook, a co-branded product of the company's MotoGP team sponsorship.

Home and small-business networking solutions major D-Link brought a constellation of 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) products to CES 2020, making the standard's mainstreaming. The company's new lineup includes everything from affordable mainstream Wi-Fi 6 routers to high-end routers for gaming, home mesh kits, and plug-in range extenders. The company also unveiled innovative new 5G routers. These are Wi-Fi 6 routers in which instead of just a 1 GbE wired WAN uplink, you connect to the Internet over 5G mobile networks. This makes your Internet access extremely portable and convenient.

The DWR-2010, DWP-1020, and DWR-978 are D-Link's first 5G-to-802.11ax solutions. The DWR-2010 is a 5G NR "Enhanced Gateway," supporting up to 4 Gbps 5G downlink over 5G NR sub-6 GHz, 802.11ax downstream, and a wired switch that features one 2.5 GbE and three 1 GbE LAN downlinks, and a 1 GbE WAN uplink. The DWR-978 is a 5G gateway with up to 1 Gbps 5G downlink, 802.11ac (up to 2600 Mbps) downlink Wi-Fi, four 1 GbE LAN, and one 1 GbE WAN. There's also an outdoor gateway for your lawn, which supports 5G NR Sub-6 GHz, a stellar 5 GbE LAN port, and can withstand a temperature range from -45°C to 55°C, and offers IP45 water resistance. The three will initially only be available through mobile network service providers and not off-the-shelf.

A new find this CES 2020 is Martiantec, a new tech entrant that wants to reinvent the keyboard and mouse as we know it. Their eyeball magnet is what they call the "Martian 104 prototype keyboard" (a working title). Its design involves the physical compartmentalization of every key into interconnected nodes that make up a mesh. The keycap surrounds each node.

This design ensures that no dirt accumulates between keys over time. The Martian 104 comes in several glossy, bright colors. Under the hood(s), this membrane keyboard uses a single piece fiberglass PCB that's been heavily perforated. Each key in this otherwise standard 104-key QWERTY keyset is re-programmable. Martiantec also showed us a prototype wireless mouse, with little else to go off aside from the images below.More pictures follow.

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.1.2 beta is released to the main driver update channel, and adds support for the new Vulkan 1.2 graphics API. This is in comparison to the GeForce 441.99 drivers with Vulkan 1.2, which were released as a "developer beta." In addition, the drivers add optimization for "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot." Among the two fixed issues with this releases are Unreal Engine 4 titles such as "KovaaK 2.0: The Meta," "Tetris Effect" and "Snooker 19" failing to launch with Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020; and a bug where single-display systems running Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards experience intermittent reboots when the system is left idle on the desktop.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.2 BetaThe change-log follows.

HyperX made a splash at CES 2020 with several innovations. The star-attraction was the ChargePlay Clutch, an innovative Nintendo Switch battery dock that lets you extend your gaming session by augmenting a hot-swappable battery-pack. This battery pack has a Qi certified wireless charging receptacle, and the separately-purchasable ChargePlay Qi dock lets you charge up to two battery packs in one go. You can also split the contraption into two, such that the head unit sits on a table with a kick-stand, while the two JoyCons get grips of their own.

The HyperX Cloud Flight S is another innovative gaming peripheral for those on the move. It is an around-the-ear headset with a conventional mic stock. One of the two cans has a Qi wireless charging receptacle so you can charge it on any Qi-compatible charging surface. The internal batteries provide up to 30 hours of use on a full charge. The internal DAC provides a virtual 7.1 surround sound, while the NGenuity software lets you control its RGB illuminated HyperX logos.

Plextor showed off its very recently announced M9P line of premium PCI-Express NVMe SSDs at CES 2020. The M9P Plus comes in both half-height add-in card (AIC) form-factor, and a more conventional M.2-2280 form-factor. In both, it leverages PCI-Express 3.0 x4 along with the NVMe 1.3 protocol. At the heart of these drives is the Marvell 88SS1092 "Eldora Plus" controller that has 8 flash channels. This controller is paired with Kioxia 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash (BiCS 4), and a DDR4 DRAM cache.

With capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB, the M9P offers sequential reads of up to 3,400 MB/s, with up to 2,200 MB/s writes (up to 1,700 MB/s writes for the 256 GB variant). Endurance (TBW) for the three models are proportionately rated at 160 TB, 320 TB, and 640 TB. The 256 GB variant of the M.2-2280 model is priced at $51, the 512 GB variant at $81, and the 1 TB variant at $135. The AIC equivalents are priced at roughly $15 premiums over these prices, and in addition to the convenience of AIC (easier to swap in a test bench), they feature some RGB LED embellishments.

EVGA unveiled a pair of entry-thru-mainstream power supply series at CES 2020. These include the BA series at the very bottom of EVGA's pile, an the B5 series that combines a mainstream feature set with some aspirational features such as fully modular cabling. The BA series will eventually replace the BR series. We spotted a 600 W model, although the lineup could include 450 W, 500 W, and 600 W models. The BA is 80 Plus Bronze certified, and features a single +12V rail design, along with fixed, sleeved cabling that includes flat black ribbon-type cables for all connectors except the 24-pin ATX and 4+4 pin EPS.

The B5 series is slightly more upscale, in that it features fully modular cabling, and comes in capacities of up to 750 W. The B5 series succeeds the B3 series from the current product stack, and comes with updated innards, and possibly a quieter 135 mm fan. The 750 W model includes two 8-pin EPS connectors, in addition to four 6+2 pin PCIe power. EVGA is backing both the BA and B5 series with 5-year warranties.

Cut from the digital storefront cloth as you will, the EPIC Games Store has come to stay. EPIC has just announce that its digital distribution platform has achieved over 100 M subscribed users (which is different from active users, so mind the gap). That is still a success by any metric, since the digital games storefront was such a one-sided market before EPIC entered the fray - you'd be forgiven for describing the PC games distribution platform network as being composed of "Steam and the others".

Through platform exclusivity deals for new PC launches, a more enticing profit split between developers and games that are available through its store (with its headline and exclusive-grabbing 88-12 percent revenue split), monthly game giveaways and the power of Fortnite, EPIC has said that the EPIC Games Store alone generated $680 million in revenue thus far. Of that amount, Epic says $251 million represents sales of third-party games. part of that revenue has been channeled back at gamers - $23 million has been distributed in coupons and discounts toward game sales. According to EPIC, the nine most successful games in its platform are World War Z, Borderlands 3, Untitled Goose Game, Metro Exodus, Control, The Outer Worlds, The Division 2, Dauntless, and Satisfactory.

Razer announces the launch of the Razer DeathAdder V2, the latest iteration of Razer's best-selling mouse, and the Razer Basilisk V2, Razer's highly customizable gaming mouse, both upgraded and refreshed with the latest in Razer's industry-leading mouse technology.

Since its initial launch, the Razer DeathAdder has consistently raised the bar for gaming mice, with over 30 variations on the iconic design which, as of 2019, has sold more than 10 million units worldwide. Retaining its signature design and class-leading ergonomics, the Razer DeathAdder V2 now features Razer's Focus+ Optical Sensor, Optical Mouse Switches and Razer Speedflex Cable; making the DeathAdder V2 an essential weapon in any gamer's arsenal.

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia-based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer,today announces the expansion of its liquid cooling gear portfolio with two new tools from the EK-Loop portfolio - EK-Loop Soft Tube Cutter and EK-Loop Modulus Hard Tube Bending Tool.

EK-Loop Soft Tube Cutter
EK-Loop Soft Tube Cutter is a small handy tool specifically made for soft tube cutting. It is compatible with various flexible soft tubing types such as PVC, EPDM, Norprene, silicone, etc. The maximum size compatibility of the cutter is 16 mm (5/8") OD. The EK-Loop Soft Tube Cutter is made in China and is available for purchase for €4.90.

German DIY liquid cooling major Alphacool brought two unique turnkey products to CES 2020, the updated Eisbaer Aurora AIO CPU cooler, and the Eiswolf AIO graphics card cooler. The Eisbaer Aurora is an original design by Alphacool, and bring a few feature additions with this generation. To begin with, Alphacool claims the pump is significantly quieter than the original Eisbaer. The casing of the new Eisbaer's pump-block now comes with ARGB (digital RGB) embellishments. If you look closely into the acrylic windows, you'll see illuminated polar bears around the pump housing.

The tubing and quick-release fittings have been updated to Alphacool's latest TPV series. Lastly, Alphacool has upgraded the included fans to the new Aurora Lux Pro fans that have ARGB lighting. The Eisbaer Aurora comes in four variants based on radiator size: 240 mm x 120 mm, 280 mm x 140 mm, 360 mm x 120 mm, and 420 mm x 140 mm. The biggest advantage Alphacool claims over other AIOs is the choice of materials: both the block and radiator are copper.

Envision Peripherals Inc. (EPI), the Brand license partner for Philips Audio in North America, announces today the latest addition to the Philips audio line with the Philips Wireless over-ear noise cancelling headphone (TAPH805BK). The headphones are now available on Amazon, competitively pricedat $199.99 USD. Ideal for at Home, in the Office, or on-the-go, the new Philips (TAPH805BK) headphones provide users with an unparalleled listening experience.

Music or Silence
Eliminate outside noise through a press of a button with Active Noise Canceling mode or flip to Awareness Mode to stay in tune with your surroundings. Users can control volume by swiping up or down on the ear-housing touch control panel. Activate or deactivate Active Noise Canceling or engage in Awareness Mode with a simple press. While carrying out a call over Bluetooth, its built-in mic with echo cancellation keeps sound crystal clear.

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2020, Living Room PC manufacturer STEIGER DYNAMICS launches the liquid cooled FORGE compact Gaming PC. Measuring only 6.7 x 18.5 x 10.8 inches (17 x 47 x 27.4 cm (WxHxD), 22 L volume), FORGE feels equally home on desks, TV cabinets and other areas with limited space. FORGE can be placed vertically or horizontally while providing equal cooling performance and quietness levels.

Based on a modified Phanteks Evolve Shift chassis, FORGE features a high-quality, vibration-optimized, sand-blasted aluminium design with side mesh or windows. FORGE is available in Satin Black and Anthracite Grey color options. 120 and 140 mm CPU liquid cooling options and 140 mm case fans allow for maximum air flow and ultra-quiet operation at idle and low loads. This gives FORGE the capability to handle latest generation overclocked Intel CPUs up to 10 cores/20 threads and the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X with 16 cores/32 threads as well full-size NVIDIA graphics cards up to the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

ZOTAC isn't just a graphics card major, but over the years developed a thriving lineup of compact desktops, mini PCs, and compact gaming desktops. The big buzzword this CES is "creator," and the company unveiled its new Inspire Studio line of compact desktops targeting creators, which are physically similar to the ZBOX Magnus. These are 5.85-liter (volume) boxes that take up minimal space on your desk, but pack serious hardware: a 9th gen Core i7 processor, GeForce RTX 2060 Super graphics, M.2 NVMe storage, and modern networking that include 802.11ax WLAN and 2.5 GbE wired Ethernet.

Next up is the ZBOX Edge. ZOTAC has been pushing the limits of compact desktops, and the ZBOX Edge MI643 is their latest creation. With an ultra-thin design that involves a 2.85 cm tall body and the ability to tuck it away behind your monitor, the MI643 packs a Core i5-10210U quad-core "Comet Lake" processor, DDR4 SO-DIMM memory, M.2 NVMe SSD storage, 802.11ac WLAN, dual 1 GbE networking, and Bluetooth 5.0. A more economical variant of this is the CI341, with 3.21 cm height, Celeron N4100 SoC, M.2 SATA storage, and SO-DIMM memory slots.

A little over a year ago, we announced our intention to rebuild Microsoft Edge on the Chromium open source project with the goals of delivering better compatibility for everyone, less fragmentation for web developers, and a partnership with the Chromium community to improve the Chromium engine itself. At Ignite, we unveiled our new vision for the web and search, our colorful new icon, and how Microsoft Edge + Bing are the browser and search engine for business — and we are thrilled by the growing excitement we've heard from all of you who've tried it out and sent feedback!

From this incredible momentum, today I'm pleased to announce the new Microsoft Edge is now available to download on all supported versions of Windows and macOS in more than 90 languages. Microsoft Edge is also available on iOS and Android, providing a true cross-platform experience. The new Microsoft Edge provides world class performance with more privacy, more productivity and more value while you browse. Our new browser also comes with our Privacy Promise and we can't wait for you to try new features like tracking prevention, which is on by default, and provides three levels of control while you browse.

NVIDIA today released its first developer beta drivers that support the new Vulkan 1.2 3D graphics API. Labeled GeForce 441.99, under the R440-series, the drivers extend Vulkan 1.2 support to all NVIDIA graphics architectures going back to "Kepler." That would include GTX 600/700-series "Kepler," GTX 700/900-series "Maxwell," GTX 10-series "Pascal," and GTX 16/RTX 20-series "Turing," along with TITAN and Quadro graphics cards based on these architectures. NVIDIA states that its API support for Vulkan 1.2 is "full," including including support for timeline semaphores, descriptor indexing, buffer device address and SPIR-V 1.5 features.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 441.99 Vulkan 1.2 Developer Beta

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces the release of the Vulkan 1.2 specification for GPU acceleration. This release integrates 23 proven extensions into the core Vulkan API, bringing significant developer-requested access to new hardware functionality, improved application performance, and enhanced API usability. Multiple GPU vendors have certified conformant implementations, and significant open source tooling is expected during January 2020.

Vulkan continues to evolve by listening to developer needs, shipping new functionality as extensions, and then consolidating extensions that receive positive developer feedback into a unified core API specification. Carefully selected API features are made optional to enable market-focused implementations. Many Vulkan 1.2 features were requested by developers to meet critical needs in their engines and applications, including: timeline semaphores for easily managed synchronization; a formal memory model to precisely define the semantics of synchronization and memory operations in different threads; descriptor indexing to enable reuse of descriptor layouts by multiple shaders; deeper support for shaders written in HLSL, and more.

iBuyPower is clearly focusing a bit more on providing a more unique look and feel with their systems in recent years and the Revolt GT3 is no exception. The chassis at the foundation of the system can hold either a classic ITX based system with the GPU connected with an flexible cable on the backside of the motherboard or may be used to house the just announced Intel NUC Extreme platform. Either way, the platform offers maximum flexibility for building small form factor systems.

This is done with a suspended frame inside the chassis which can be pulled out completely for easy assembly. The covers may also be flipped around, giving you additional space. iBuyPower is working on brackets which can hold low profile fans or additional storage if you choose to rotate the top mesh cover for example. The Revolt GT3 is still being fine-tuned and the variant we saw for the NUC Extreme Platform was 3D printed while the additional mounting components for cooling and storage were not final yet either

During the CES 2020, we stopped by iBuyPower's booth, where we were shown a work in progress for an ambient lighting solution for your living room which mimics the setup of a 5.1 surround sound audio solution. It is a WIFI connected lighting setup, which enables you to adjust lighting based on what is playing on the TV or adjust it to suit your mood. The shown implementation did not include any speakers, but that is an option being considered. In addition to the 5 channels being placed traditionally around your TV, there is one square element that is intended to go on the ceiling, but as each light required separate power this could be an issue with very few living rooms coming with a plug in the ceiling to accommodate this. The whole setup can be controlled via software on your PC or an app on your phone, but as this is just a first version of the whole setup, things are prone to change before it hits retail as well. That said, while some may have had enough of the RGB craze, the lighting was quite immersive and could be interesting for gamers or movie aficionados.

Phison Electronics, the industry's leader in flash controller and NAND storage solutions, is demonstrating mainstream performance using 4-bits per cell QLC NAND flash controllers and SSDs at the Consumer Electronics Show 2020 (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. In its private suite, Phison is showcasing the addition of support for QLC NAND to its already shipping E16 PCIe Gen 4x4, E12 PCIe Gen 3x4, and S12 SATA controllers that use TLC NAND. Phison's industry leading approach leverages highly successful controllers that were qualified by tier-1 OEMs, are in mass production now, and extends new SSD designs to utilize either TLC or QLC NAND. Phison's proprietary QLC NAND controller technology enables higher SSD capacities in industry standard form factors while meeting the performance demands of mainstream applications.

Phison's flagship E16 series controller for PCIe Gen 4x4 NVMe SSDs can achieve up to 4 TB in capacity with QLC NAND and reaches speeds of 4.9 GB/s for sequential reads and 3.8 GB/s for sequential writes. The E12 series controller enables PCIe Gen 3x4 NVMe SSDs and has a capacity of up to 8 TB and speeds of 3.4 GB/s sequential reads, 3.0 GB/s sequential writes with QLC NAND. For the SATA interface, Phison is also demonstrating the S12 controller series SSDs with up to 16 TB using QLC NAND and performance at 550 MB/s sequential reads and 530 MB/s sequential writes. Phison's DRAM-less S13T controllers enable smaller form factors, have a capacity of up to 2 TB, and operate at 550 MB/s sequential reads and 500 MB/s sequential writes.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading premium gaming hardware manufacturer, today announced the launch of the Radeon RX 5600 XT GAMING OC 6G and Radeon RX 5600 XT WINDFORCE OC 6G. The latest Radeon RX 5600 XT series graphics processing built with 7 nm processor technology with RDNA architecture is designed for the best 1080 pixel gaming experience, and supports the PCI Express 4.0 interface. It delivers extreme 1080 pixel performance so users can enjoy higher game fidelity, better gaming performance with higher frame rates, and ultra-fast response times, for a better gaming experience than ever before.

GIGABYTE Radeon RX 5600 XT GAMING OC 6G is cooled by the WINDFORCE 3X cooling system that comes with triple 90 mm unique blade fans and alternate spinning fans. The thermal cooling solution includes 5 copper heat-pipes that directly touch the GPU so the heat from the GPU will be dissipated rapidly via conductivity effect. With these thermal dissipation methods, GIGABYTE tends to each component's temperatures for VRAM and MOSFETs at the same time, keeping components at low temperatures during the stable working state and extends the lifespan. The black metal back plate not only strengthens the overall structure but also prevents the PCB from bending or losing parts and gives the external design a more textured look. Moreover, GAMING OC has LOGO lighting on the card side so gamers can synchronize 16.7 million customizable color options and numerous lighting effects with other AORUS devices by clicking on RGB Fusion 2.0. It also allows users to adjust the diversified gaming atmosphere to what they have in mind.

As the world's most popular GAMING graphics card brand, MSI is proud to introduce its full line up of graphics cards based on new AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card with considerable performance. Furnished with the new AMD RDNA gaming architecture - Efficiently energetic, RDNA architecture was designed to deliver incredible performance, scalability and power efficiency. Built on the 7 nm FinFET process and delivering higher performance-per-watt compared to the previous architecture. The Radeon RX 5600 XT Series will be available as GAMING and MECH.

These AMD RDNA architecture-powered GAMING cards feature the new MSI exclusive Innovative Power Allocation Technology. This technology ensures that the card will draw its power from the power supply rather than the PCIe slot on the motherboard, resulting in a cleaner power signal and preventing any issues with the motherboard.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, Thermaltake proudly announced a new member of Level 20 series, the Level 20 RS ARGB edition mid-tower chassis. Inspired by sports cars, the Level 20 RS ARGB has a rising top panel that cleverly hides the I/O ports on its side; the ARGB light bar shown on its front perfectly mimics the afterimage of a car's tail light. Furthermore, we switched the front panel's material to a three-layer filter, and adjusted the pillars of the front panel to help maximize the airflow, giving a unique characteristic to this chassis.

Softly shining through the front panel is the two 200 mm ARGB preinstalled fan, with one 120 mm fan at the rear end creating perfect ventilation. Two tempered glass side panels and an acrylic tempered window on the PSU cover provides excessive visual accessibility for showing off your power supply; rotational PCI-E slots and removable PSU cover allow users to install their PC's effortlessly and to arrange their parts as they wish. By utilizing Thermaltake components, users can experience the best liquid cooling expansions and advanced cable management. Get ready for your race by choosing the new Level 20 RS ARGB.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.29.0 introduces new features and support for upcoming new graphics hardware. To begin with, support is added for Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645, AMD "Renoir" Ryzen 4000U and 4000H series processor iGPUs; Radeon RX 5600 XT, RX 5600, Radeon Pro Vega II, and HD 8280E. All Radeon RX 5000-series "Navi" GPUs now report game clock as "GPU clock" instead of base-clock. PCIe speed reporting on AMD "Vega" graphics cards has also been fixed. Fixed a GPU-Z application crash when GPU driver gets stopped (eg: during a driver update). Lastly, fixed a UX issue where window position wouldn't get saved if GPU-Z is running while you shut down or reboot the PC.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.29.0The change-log follows.

SAPPHIRE Technology launches PULSE version of the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card with powerful TriXX boost Software tool that delivers up to a 15% performance improvement in popular games when the resolution is adjusted from 1920 x 1080 to 1728 x 972. Built on the groundbreaking AMD RDNA gaming architecture and 7 nm process technology, the PULSE Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card comes with 2304 stream processors, a Boost Clock of up to 1620 MHz and a Game Clock of 1560 MHz delivering ultra- responsive high fidelity AAA gaming @ up to 60 FPS in select titles. The SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 5600 XT Series are equipped with 6 GB GDDR6 of high speed memory and PCI Express 4.0 support for maximum game performance, exceptional power efficiency and outstanding value.

Focusing on what gamers' need, the PULSE Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card comes with a pivotal set of exciting features that deliver a superlative gaming experience powered by the new AMD RDNA gaming architecture. Impressive clock speeds, near silent cooling and a durable design are the trademark of the PULSE series of graphics cards.

Edifier, the prominent designers and award-winning manufacturer of premium sound systems and well-known for its bookshelf speakers, today introduced their newest products, the TWS NB, TWS6, GM6 and G7, to its ever-expanding audio and gaming accessory lineup.

To fill a gap in the marketplace, the TWS NB features active noise technology found in noise-canceling over-ear headphones, in a sleek, truly wireless earphone design while boasting a fully noise-free, immersive listening experience at an affordable cost. Equipped with Knowles tri-frequency balanced armature driver, the TWS6 delivers a rich and powerful, all-encompassing sound in a compact and elegant design. In terms of gaming, the GM6 offers a truly portable mobile gaming experience with the security of listening to every sound in tandem with the visuals, while the G7 brings high quality, surround sound audio in a heat regulating, easy-to-use and stylish headset.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (hence, E3) was, for years, one of those unmissable tech events with an unmistakable gravitas. All companies that actually meant something took attendance to woo the globe with the latest games, entertainment systems, and advances in technology. It still retains most of that glamour, even if some of its sheen is slightly rubbed off already. However, we can expect E3 2020 to the stage for a number of reveals from companies, and one of those companies is Microsoft. Phil Spencer has already confirmed that Microsoft will have a strong presence at E3, and with that being the case, you can expect new games, more information on already announced games (more Halo Infinite, please), and additional information pertaining the company's Xbox Series X games console.

But while some are still betting on E3, others have started to go their own way by organizing their own events. Sony has announced that they will be skipping E3 2020 in favor of hundreds of smaller, yet more globally seeded events, citing that the Entertainment Software Association's (ESA) vision for their 2020 show doesn't exactly align with what Sony is aiming at with its products. Still, you know 2020 will be a packed year for gaming, both in the console and PC spaces.

Lenovo has announced a duo of new gaming monitors soon to be available. Starting with the biggest one in the family, the Lenovo G32qc features a 31.5" diagonal with NearEdgeless technology (a good name compared to all the other bezeless presentations that aren't - not really) and QHD (2560 x 1440) resolution. The VA panel features a 1500R curvature so that all points of the screen are at the same distance to your center of vision. The 144 Hz refresh rate is FreeSync-enabled, and the 4 ms response time is nothing to scoff at, while the 72 % NTSC color coverage and 350 cd/m² maximum brightness are pretty standard. The monitor further features TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light and flicker-free certifications. I/O is taken care of by 1x DP 1.2 and 1x HDMI 2.0, and the stand features lift and tilt adjustments.

The G27c doesn't take many of its bigger sibling's features (it's more akin to a distant cousin). The 27" diagonal features a 1080p VA panel with the same NearEdgeless technology and 1500R curvature. Refresh rates, however, climb up to 165 Hz (whilst keeping the 4 ms response time) with FreeSync support. The 72 % NTSC color coverage and 350 cd/m² maximum brightness remain, as do features like TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light and flicker-free certifications. The stand is adjustable in the 130 mm lift range and -5°/22° tilt angle. I/O is still taken care of by 1x DP 1.2 and 1x HDMI 2.0.

Confirmation of four new Radeon RX 5000-series SKUs came to light as AIB partner AFOX pushed them to regulators at the Eurasian Economic Commission. EEC filings have been a reliable early-sign of upcoming PC hardware. All thee new SKUs are positioned above the Radeon RX 5700 XT launched last year. These include the Radeon RX 5800 XT, the RX 5900 XT, the RX 5950, and the RX 5950 XT. Going by AMD's convention of two SKUs per resolution serving up to differentiated experiences, the RX 5800 XT could be a step up from the RX 5700 XT in offering 1440p high frame-rate AAA performance. This could possibly put it in direct competition with the GeForce RTX 2070 Super. AMD took a similar 2-pronged approach to 1080p, with the RX 5500 XT serving up 1080p at up to 60 fps, while the RX 5600 XT topping it up with a 40-50 percent performance uplift.

The Radeon RX 5950-series is completely new. This could very well be a new large "Navi" silicon, since dual-GPU is dead. Just as AMD carved out the RX 5700 XT, the RX 5700, and the RX 5600 XT, it could carve out the three new SKUs from this silicon. AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su already confirmed that her company is working to upscale the RX 5000-series "Navi" family. The RX 5900-series could be competition for the likes of the RTX 2080 or even RTX 2080 Super. The RX 5950-series could target premium 4K gaming (RTX 2080 Ti). It remains to be seen if the three new SKUs are based on the existing RDNA architecture or the new RDNA2 architecture designed for 7 nm EUV, featuring variable-rate shading.

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The worldwide market for traditional PCs, inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, finished an impressive 2019 with fourth quarter growth of 4.8% year over year, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Global shipments during the quarter beat forecast expectations at just under 71.8 million units, the highest single quarter shipment volume in four years (4Q15). Overall, global shipments grew 2.7% year over year in 2019, the first full year of PC growth since the market grew 1.7% in 2011.

"This past year was a wild one in the PC world, which resulted in impressive market growth that ultimately ended seven consecutive years of market contraction," said Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "The market will still have its challenges ahead, but this year was a clear sign that PC demand is still there despite the continued insurgence of emerging form factors and the demand for mobile computing."

Today, on January the 14th, Microsoft is officially ending support for Windows 7 operating system. After more than 10 years since its launch, Windows 7 has remained a primary operating system on many PCs, especially OEM PCs manufactured before 2015, when Windows 10 came out. The user transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10 has not been an easy task for Microsoft, however, by declaring that the product has reached End-Of-Life, Microsoft is trying to make millions of users pull the trigger and embrace the new operating system.

When January 14th arrives, Microsoft will stop giving Windows 7 users technical support, software updates with new features, and most importantly security updates. The official recommendation from Microsoft is to upgrade to the latest version of Windows, meaning Windows 10. As some of the older PCs may have compatibility issues with newer OS, it is also recommended to check your PC specifications. If you are a customer of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, you will continue to see further support in the future, however, for regular users, the support period is over.

The leading global motherboard, graphics card and mini PC manufacturer, ASRock, announces the brand-new Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming and Challenger series graphics cards, including the triple-fan Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D3 6G OC, the dual-fan Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D2 6G OC, and the dual-fan Radeon RX 5600 XT Challenger D 6G OC graphics cards.

They use AMD 7 nm Radeon RX 5600 XT GPUs, with 6 GB 192-bit GDDR6 video memory, plus support for the PCI Express 4.0 bus standard, as well as the latest thermal design and excellent default GPU/VRAM clock settings, making ASRock's Phantom Gaming & Challenger series product lines more complete, and providing gamers an excellent 1080p gaming experience.

Audio-Technica is also introducing two SonicSport wireless Bluetooth in-ear headphones. The ATH-SPORT90BT features a built-in music player for the ultimate in on-the-go listening convenience and along with the ATH-SPORT60BT includes a number of useful upgrades from previous models. Both headphones offer a host of fitness-friendly features including IPX5 waterproof-rated construction, a built-in mic and controls for smartphone and portable device operation, and stay-in-place designs that keep them secure even during intense workouts. Both feature improved high-sensitivity drivers for impactful, immersive sound and offer longer battery life along with additional improvements.

Audio-Technica's SonicSport ATH-SPORT90BT (SRP: US$159.00) has newly-designed 6 mm drivers with a powerful magnetic circuit and dedicated headphone amplifier, to bring high-quality full-range (20 - 25,000 Hz) audio reproduction to listeners with active lifestyles. The ATH-SPORT90BT includes a built-in 4 GB music player, making it the ultimate portable music device - no need to carry a smartphone around during workouts. The headphones can also be paired with a smartphone or other Bluetooth device if desired.

Audio-Technica is introducing four new high-performance Hi-Res Audio headphones. The over-ear ATH-AWKT and ATH-AWAS audiophile and over-ear ATH-WP900 portable headphones combine beautifully crafted woods with superb sound quality, and the ATH-IEX1 features an exclusive hybrid multi-driver system for an unmatched in-ear listening experience.

Like all the new wooden headphones, the over-ear ATH-AWKT is handcrafted at our factory based in Tokyo. The ATH-AWKT (SRP: US$1,899.00) features housings made from prized Kokutan (striped ebony) hardwood. Long used for woodwind instruments and pianos, Kokutan is distinguished by its attractive black and brown stripes, and the housings have a hand-applied semi-gloss finish that brings out the wood's natural beauty. In addition, the high density of the Kokutan wood suppresses unwanted resonances to contribute to the headphones' clear, natural sound.

Audio-Technica is introducing its ATH-ANC300TW truly wireless in-ear headphones, which combine Audio-Technica's next-generation truly wireless technology with newly-designed digital hybrid active noise-cancelling (ANC) electronics. The result is improved high-fidelity sound and superior noise cancelling performance, all without requiring any connecting wires.

The Audio-Technica ATH-ANC300TW (SRP: US$249.00) utilizes digital hybrid noise cancellation. In this design, the ANC mics are located both in front of and behind the driver, with one of the ANC mics mounted in a unique horizontal configuration within the sound chamber. This allows the location of the driver and geometry of the chamber to be optimized for an ideal balance of ambient noise reduction and audio performance. The ATH-ANC300TW's 5.8 mm drivers feature a diamond-like carbon coated diaphragm that combines light weight with rigidity for faster response time and reduced distortion, along with powerful, impactful sound with generous bass response and improved high-frequency extension and clarity.

ASRock is looking to launch a PCIe expansion card for all of your M.2 needs. Should you find your current motherboard is already full to the gills with M.2 SSDs, ASRock's Hyper Quad M.2 PCIe expansion card will allow you to increase M.2 vacancy by up to four additional slots (there's an on-off toggle for you to move in the PCB to select the active M.2 SSDs). The card uses the PCIe 4.0 x16 interface to sufficiently feed the four M.2 SSDs (which typically use the PCIe 4x NVMe protocol) with data.

This is a top notch expansion card design, featuring an aluminium cover and a 50 mm fan to cool down all those SSDs' controllers. The cover features 4x 110 mm thermal pads which align with the M.2 mounts on the PCB, thus allowing the aluminium cover to serve as a veritable heatsink and improve operating temperatures. The expansion card is fed by a single 6-pin power connector, and there is an activity LED for quality of life improvements. No word on pricing just yet.

EK, the European premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing a unique chipset water block made for Aorus motherboards based on AMD X570 chipset - the EK-Quantum Momentum Chipset Aorus X570. The EK-Quantum Momentum Chipset Aorus X570 water block completely replaces the PCH (chipset) heatsink and the small fan which is the primary source of the noise. This water block-based solution removes a moving part, thus providing a more long term solution with 0 noise and far superior thermal performance.

This chipset block is specifically made for the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite, Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra and Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboards. The EK-Quantum Momentum Chipset Aorus X570 water block is made in Slovenia, Europe and is available for pre-order through EK Webshop and Partner Reseller Network. This Quantum Line water block will start shipping on the 22nd of January 2020 for €39.99.

CORSAIR introduced us to their small form factor Capellix LEDs, co-developed with Primax, at CES last year and has since been utilizing them in memory and peripheral products alike. So it was just a natural next step for them to find a way to include them into their cases, and the company took to CES 2020 to show off a traditional retail case which has been covered with a film encompassing these LEDs.

The glass panels are lined with a thin, transparent film so that you are able to have a matrix of these RGB LEDs on the backside without any easily visible wires, which makes for quite a unique look. This implementation does require a lot of more complex wiring relative to a standard LED strip, tiny as it still may be spatially, which currently limits the number of LEDs that could be embedded in such a removable panel, but the result is attention-grabbing regardless. There is no concrete launch date or pricing for this, and CORSAIR is still deciding if they will include these on current cases as a special edition or for future enclosure products. That said, the implementation at CES already looked pretty clean externally and, a fun fact is, you can touch them on the backside of the glass panel and will not get zapped.

Way back in June 2018, when the first Threadrippers made landfall, it was reported that Intel was working on a new 22-core "Skylake-X" silicon that sat in between the 18-core HCC (high core-count) die, and the 28-core XCC (extreme core-count) die. The roughly 700 mm² XCC die, with its 6 memory channels, couldn't be integrated with the LGA2066 package, and was reserved for the enterprise LGA3647 package that made a workstation/quasi-client debut with the 28-core Xeon W-3175X. It was hence rumored that an in-between 22-core silicon was under development that could be integrated with LGA2066. Fast forward to 2020, and Intel's client HEDT processor lineup doesn't look much different from its 2017 one. The 18-core i9-10980XE leads the pack, and despite its $1,000 price, has received largely lukewarm reviews. If screenshots surfacing on Chinese tech forums are to be believed, Intel is toying with the idea of the 22-core die meant for LGA2066 once again.

Referenced as Core i9-10990XE in straight-up CPU-Z screenshots, the processor is based on the "Cascade Lake-X" microarchitecture, and has the same I/O as the i9-10980XE, looking at the instruction sets featured. It has 22 cores and HyperThreading enables 44 threads. Cache hierarchy and balance are characteristic of "Cascade Lake," with 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core, and 30.25 MB of shared L3 cache. The I/O is likely identical to the i9-10980XE as that's a function of the platform and the socket. What's more interesting are the clock-speeds. The name-string of the engineering sample references a nominal clock-speed of 4.00 GHz, and in the screenshot, the chip is shown running at 5.00 GHz (at least on one core). There's also a performance benchmark to go with the leak, possibly CineBench R20 nT. Here, the i9-10990XE is shown scoring 14,005 points, which is in the same ballpark as the 24-core Ryzen Threadripper 3960X.

Corsair had acquired the performance system builder Origin PC in 2019, and we are seeing the first apparent synergic effects of this at CES 2020 with the all-new Big O system. The one-off from last year was a hand-built concept that made serious waves online by incorporating a PC, XBOX One X, PS4 Pro, and Nintendo Switch in the same chassis. It was not really intended to be a retail product, however, but this new 2020 version will actually come to the market in two main flavors: with an Xbox One S or a PS4 Pro pre-installed in a Corsair Crystal Series 280X dual-chamber case.

Origin will still offer all the usual configurations on the gaming PC side, with the base configuration starting at $2,499 MSRP for the XBOX One S version paired with a 1 TB HDD, as well as an Intel Core i5-9600K, 16 GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 GPU, a 240 GB SSD, and a 450 W power supply. The interesting element is certainly the console within, as it will be liquid cooled alongside some additional elements to keep the rest of the key components cool as well. You may also opt for upgraded storage options for the console, and further customize it by having an Elgato capture card built-in, so that you could stream your console gaming straight through the PC for example. Also, thanks to the completely separated power setup, your console would not shut down if your PC happens to go into standby for example. In terms of warranty, Origin PC will offer direct warranty for the consoles as well just like its traditional PCs. The Big O is up for pre-order with a special price starting at $2327 on the Origin website now.

At this year's CES, Razer presented its Tomahawk gaming desktop based on Intel's Compute Element - an all in one solution that packs CPU, RAM, and storage on the same PCB. The Tomahawk presents a complete solution, meaning that it is a pre-built PC that you can spec out to your liking. Available with up to Intel 9th generation Core i9, 64 GB of RAM and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, the Tomahawk is marketed as a powerful small form factor gaming PC.

When it comes to connectivity options, the Tomahawk is featuring all of the ports that are available on Ghost Canyon NUC 9, meaning two Thunderbolt 3 ports, six USB-A ports, one HDMI and two LAN ports, plus video output from the graphics card. On the PCB than connects the Compute Element and the GPU, there is also one PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD slot available. Razer also announced that they will make this case available on its own to please all the DIYers, and it will be called the Tomahawk N1. For now, however, it is a pre-built only.

The "Zen 2" based Ryzen 4000-series mobile processors and Threadripper 3990X HEDT chip dominated headlines throughout AMD's CES 2020 event, but an important product announcement slipped past us: the mobile Athlon 3000 Gold and 3000 Silver families of entry-level mobile SoCs. These are 15-Watt SoCs targeting low-cost ultraportables, convertibles, and straight up Windows x64 tablets, competing against Intel's Pentium Gold 5000U "Whiskey Lake" and Pentium Silver "Gemini Lake Refresh" series. The family currently only consists of two SKUs, the Athlon Gold 3150U and Athlon Silver 3050U.

The two chips are based on the "Dali" silicon, and feature "Zen" CPU cores. The Athlon Gold 3150U features a 2-core/4-thread "Zen" CPU clocked at 2.40 GHz with 3.30 GHz boost. The Athlon Silver 3050U, on the other hand, is configured with a 2-core/2-thread CPU clocked at 2.30 GHz with 3.20 GHz boost. The CPUs on both models is configured with 4 MB of L3 cache, which takes their "total cache" (L2 + L3) figure up to 5 MB. The iGPU on the 3150U is a Radeon Vega 3 with 192 stream processors, clocked at 1.00 GHz. The one on the 3050U, is AMD's smallest, with just 2 compute units, working up to 128 stream processors, but the engine clock is set at 1.10 GHz.

Kingston Technology today announced the Data Center DC1000B M.2 NVMe SSD, optimized for server boot drive applications, featuring power-loss protection (PLP). Kingston's Data Centre DC1000B is a high-performance M.2 (2280) NVMe PCIe SSD using the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 PCIe interface with 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. DC1000B offers data centres a cost-effective boot drive solution with the reassurance that they are purchasing an SSD designed for server use. The DC1000B is ideally suited as an internal boot drive for use in high-volume rack-mount servers, as well as for use in purpose-built systems that require a high-performance M.2 SSD that includes on-board power loss protection (PLP).

M.2 NVMe SSDs are evolving within the data centre, providing efficiencies in booting servers to preserve valuable front-loading drive bays for data storage. Whitebox and Tier 1 Server OEMs are beginning to equip server motherboards with one, or sometimes two, M.2 sockets for boot purposes. While the M.2 form factor was originally designed as a client SSD form factor, its small physical size and high performance make it attractive for server use. Not all SSD are created equal and using a client SSD in a server application may result in poor, inconsistent performance.

Creative had a positive impact on us at TechPowerUp who attended CES last year, with their retail demonstration of Super X-Fi headphone holography arguably being the most impressive product announcement at the trade show. Yours truly was especially taken aback with the hardware implementation of Super X-Fi, with the first product implementing it, the SXFI Amp, earning a well-deserved recommendation too. Naturally, we were eager to see what the company was up to next, and met them at CES this year too where it was evident they were going all aboard the Super X-Fi train, and inviting everyone along for the ride.

There were definitely a lot of hardware products with the SXFI DSP built in, but the main announcement was in the form of the new Super X-Fi Gen 2 audio profile. Gen 1, from last year, garnered a lot of positive reviews, but also had mixed reception from the general populace who had to rely on head mapping and not also the microphone-based measurements the press got in person. Indeed, my own experience with higher end headphones was not as positive, with music losing detail in favor of a surround sound speaker setup experience that perhaps was not necessary. The worse the audio source was, the worse this discrepancy was as well. Creative had gathered tens of thousands of ear profiles and feedback this past year, and used it to train their Super X-Fi AI engine to develop a more accurate, personalized audio profile as part of Super X-Fi Gen 2. The company claims this free update to all existing Gen 1 profiles will improve also the preservation of audio detail, as well as better positional accuracy as well. We will put this to the test soon enough, but read past the break on more new announcements from Creative, including all the new hardware with this technology built in.

As standalone wireless headsets such as the Oculus Quest grow strongly in popularity, 3dRudder is preparing full support of the wireless experience. The new 3dRudder Wireless Bridge adds wireless supports to the 3dRudder foot motion controller for PC. This new module enables developers and businesses to create games and applications for wireless headsets that integrate native 3dRudder support, providing users with a natural motion experience. It is especially of great importance as hand tracking becomes the main interaction method.

The release of wireless headsets such as the Oculus Quest paves the way for a massive adoption of VR by consumers and businesses. The objective is an out-of-the-box ready experience, where users do not need powerful PCs and do not have to juggle with complex command schemes found in hand controllers. The hands suddenly become free of controllers and the user can interact naturally with the VR worlds, either bear hands or with gloves offering haptic and force feedback. The feet are used for what they are best at: moving. The 3dRudder foot motion controller is used to handle effortless and hyper intuitive movements at the feet, offering 4 axes that can be combined together to move in the 3 dimensions seamlessly (forward/backward, left/right stafe, left/right turn, up/down) as shown in this video.

Attending CES is a mixed bag even before you arrive there, and it comes in the form of about a billion marketing emails invading your inbox. Amidst all these, however, was one from this US-based startup company that interested me in more ways than one. Perhaps because I handle keyboard duties here on TechPowerUp, among other things, but I have always been fascinated with products aiming to enable a more ergonomic and efficient typing experience. These products tend to take the form of smaller form factor, split or otherwise, keyboards that still adopt the staggered columns of keys. Layers are the name of the game here, with customization in the form of key mapping enabling people to position keyboards with a combination of tent, tilt, and height adjustments- especially for split keyboards. But all these still rely on the end user typing on, say, a QWERTY layout with 2-4 fingers simultaneously nearly every single time. CharaChorder wants to rethink the keyboard, and offer a product that helps you type with all 10 fingers.

The company sought inspiration from the humble stenograph, as well as arguably more efficient typing layouts such as Dvorak over QWERTY, and had a prototype for demo at CES that showcased their "3-dimensional" typing via sticks that can be assigned to a different function for each axis. I admittedly was skeptical with the emails, as well as the rough plastic casing they initially showed, but then they pulled out the working PCBs as part of the two connected halves, and typed my name and affiliation on a connected laptop at ~200 WPM. There were also only two errors throughout, which is impressive given these were words and sentences they had no way to practice before, and the speed comes in the form of them having practiced ~30-60 min a day for a month in "chorded" mode which allows simultaneous presses instead of one character at a time, which is the recommended training schedule for new users. The CharaChorder is also ambidextrous enabling users to quickly use this alongside a mouse, or even a joystick, with applications ranging from typing, to gaming via macros, and more. The company has the product up for pre-order already for $199.99 with expected delivery in December 2020 provided they hit their funding goals. Check out their website, as well as this demo video, to get a better idea of how the product works.

EVGA's cost-effective GeForce RTX 2060 KO graphics card debuted at CES, at an attractive price of USD $299, a pricing that very likely had the blessings of NVIDIA. This card may very well be the first of many RTX 2060 custom-design cards by NVIDIA partners to compete with AMD's new Radeon RX 5600 XT being launched at $279. AMD claims performance leads over the price-matched GTX 1660 Ti, which held NVIDIA's fort under the $300 price-band, until now.

Over the weekend, EVGA formally launched the RTX 2060 KO, and already offered pre-order discounts on both its own web-store, and popular U.S. retailer Newegg, with the base RTX 2060 KO going for $279, and the factory-overclocked RTX 2060 KO Ultra priced at $299, with a $20 "instant rebate." This would put the RTX 2060 KO price-matched with the RX 5600 XT, and it would be interesting to see if AMD can respond with lower prices (which would then pancake both NVIDIA's and AMD's product-stack south of $250). EVGA is expected to ship the first orders of the RTX 2060 KO from this week.

AZIO found a market segment all to themselves with their Retro peripheral lineup, which took the typewriter-style keyboard design and ran with it using rarely seen higher-end materials for the keyboard and mice including leather and wood. We saw also at Computex last year that the company wanted to make a new series of peripherals inspired by retro cameras, with the then-called Iris K-Pad being the first entry and based on the Leica analog camera design. Our coverage led to them being contacted by another entity that used the Iris name in this category already, so we feel somewhat responsible for AZIO having renamed it to the Fokal. We met AZIO at CES this past week, and they spoke more about the Fokal, including letting us know that the crowd-funding campaign is underway and already successful.

The Fokal moves away from the typewriter-style keycaps in favor of more traditional, and comfortable, keycaps and promises a fully customizable control knob which can be used for multimedia and lighting (RGB) controls by default, as well as being a joystick too. There is also full software support for more utility, with up to seven profiles on board for various use cases. The base unit is a 75% form factor keyboard as with their R.C.K. we saw recently, and there is a separate number pad unit for those who need it which is further built to suit number crunching with extra keys as seen below. The units can connect wirelessly over Bluetooth or RF, with a massive 5000 mAh battery for the primary unit promising weeks of use on a single cycle. The Indiegogo campaign, still going for another 24 days as of this post, has already hit ~400% of the goal, and units are expected to ship in April. Pricing with the current discounts range from $184/246, with MSRP going from $230/330 for the base unit/combo with number pad.

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. introduces new Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) models including a Bluetooth enabled model, as well as HHKB branded accessories for avid HHKB fans!

The HHKB was developed by programmers for programmers to provide a smooth and fast keying experience while minimizing hand and finger fatigue. The keyboard only has the most necessary keys resulting in a light, compact and minimalist device. Since its introduction, the HHKB has been used by many customers including programmers and engineers and has sold over 500,000 units worldwide. The core concepts for the HHKB are its intelligent key layout and compact size. While these features have never changed for more than 20 years, keymap customization software and multi-platform support have been introduced to meet the changes in today's technology and work environment.

"I've personally used HHKB for over 20 years for professional and personal use, and I'm very excited to bring the latest generation of this cult classic to the U.S. market." said Yasunari Shimizu, CEO of Fujitsu Computer Products of America.

Ausounds is a newcomer to the audio market as a retail product provider, but the founders have decades of experience in the music industry, and have been creating audio solutions for musicians for a while now. The company invited us to check out the brand, as well as their new products, at CES 2020 and we obliged as we usually do in an attempt to shine more light on relatively unknown companies in addition to the mainstream ones. They took the time to introduce their new AU-X active noise cancelling planar magnetic driver headphones to us, which feature 54 mm planar drivers on each earcup and four noise cancelling microphones working in a hybrid mode to allow up to 28 dB of ANC. The headphones are tuned for a transparent frequency response combined with a large soundstage and, in my limited testing, offered excellent discerning of the mid-high tones, especially when it comes to jazz and classical music.

The AU-X ANC Planar headphones have dual microphones also for calling/audio out, an included battery of 800 mAh for a rated 25 hours of battery life which the company claims is on the conservative side (think closer to 28 hours), and touch controls on the earcups for volume and media playback. Bluetooth 5.0 and 3.5 mm aux inputs complement the headphones for portability, and AptX-HD + Hi-Res certification round off the headphones which are rated for a 20 Hz-40 KHz frequency response, 32 Ω impedance, an SPL of 98 +/- 3 dB, and 280 grams in mass with protein leather earpads similar to those in the Bose QC35. The AU-X headphones cost $299.95 and will ship in March 2020. Read past the break for more on their equally new AU-Stream Hybrid earbuds.

We first had our eyes on the Nemeio e-ink display keyboard at CES last year, with the French company grabbing eyes with their per-key customizable keyboard that implements an e-ink display under each keycap. This allows the 75% form factor keyboard to be easily adaptable across users who want to, say, type in one of the rarely supported languages (think Inuit, for example) by keyboards. By supporting native OS languages on both Windows and MacOS, as well as having software drivers to allow an unlimited number of layouts which can be associated with programs, and also up to four actions per key, the keyboard is finally seeing near-retail specifications in the feature set.

At their booth during CES 2020, the company showed off two versions of the keyboard that are being contemplated for the retail release later this year. These are both clearly more finished samples compared to the prototype from before, and come in a different ID with one going for the more traditional route of a logo and indicator LEDs at the top corners, and the other adding them to the left instead. If you have a preference on either, please vote on them and help the company finalize their plans. As it stands, they are looking to sell the entire unit, which has wireless Bluetooth connectivity and a ~20 hour battery life with lighting off (via LEDs to complement the e-ink) for under $400. Nemeio says they are still working to improve the typing experience, but this is a rare keyboard that will actually help cut down the learning curve associated with smaller form factor keyboards, while making customization easier than other solutions.

We were impressed with SecureData's offerings for the encrypted portable storage market in the form of the SecureDrive BT and SecureUSB BT, and the company took to CES 2020 to announce their latest and greatest in the form of the SecureDrive Duo that combines Bluetooth app-based encryption we saw with the previous drives, as well as keypad-based encryption for on-the-go modification. The new drive retains also all the features of the BT lineup, including FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certification and secure device management. We expect this first of its kind drive to be made available in a variety of storage sizes in both HDD and SSD formats as with the SecureDrive BT, when it is made available for purchase later this year.

At this year's CES show, Sharp, a company behind Dynabook, unveiled what they call the world's lightest 13-inch notebook weighing in at just 1.9 lbs or 0.86 kilograms for all the metric system folks out there. The Portégé X30L-G as it is called is a 13-inch laptop of many qualities. For starters, it comes equipped with a 13.3-inch, 1080p IGZO display with a peak brightness of 470 nits. At its core, the Portégé X30L-G uses Intel's 10th generation of Core processors, presumably the Comet Lake variants. Onboard is also Intel's WiFi 6 standard for faster internet speeds, while the I/O is petty decent as well with two USB-A, one USB-C, one HDMI and one Ethernet port.

The laptop's chassis is made out of magnesium alloy and it features dust and drops resistance per military testing methodologies, making it a durable design that can take on everyday work. Additionally, there is a battery of unknown capacity that is advertised to last up to 14.5 hours, however, that is based on Dynabook's testing and we will have to wait for 3rd party reviews to confirm. The X30L-G is going to arrive sometime in February for the price of $1600.

MSI at CES 2020 presented the "world's very first" laptop with a built-in display that uses Mini LED technology, called the Creator 17. Equipped with a 17-inch, 4K panel, the Creator 17 is a charming portable content creator PC. Incorporating the new Mini LED technology, this laptop's display outshines every commercial laptop screen. With a maximum peak brightness of up to 1000 nits, it beats most of the competition. Capable of displaying 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, this laptop screen is ready for displaying all of the HDR content you can throw at it.

When it comes to the Mini LED technology itself, it allows individual LEDs inside the screen to be less than 2 mm in size, which is very small and allows for some creative solutions. For example, MSI used this advantage to enable the display to have 240 local dimming zones, representing a big improvement in this size range compared to IPS. Another big improvement that Mini LED brings is that HDR content will get an upgrade as well. Due to the nature of Mini LEDs, the display can achieve a very distinguishing level of contrast between dark and bright areas. CPU support includes options of Intel's 10th generation Core i9 processor, while the GPU option is unknown. For storage, there are slots for two NVMe PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSDs and one M.2 SATA SSD slot.

During this year's CES, Dell had a few concept products on hand that we checked out. Among those are the two laptop concepts called the Concept Duet and the Concept Ori. Designed as unconventional mobile devices, these laptops are very different than anything currently present on the market. First in line is the Concept Duet. This model is a standard looking laptop from outside, however, when you open it up, you will find that the keyboard is absent. The place where the keyboard sits is now replaced with another screen. Both the main and the secondary screens are the same quality 13.4-inch 1080p displays that work in tandem to achieve the best possible experience. However, if you wish to use a real keyboard, there is a magnetic addon that snaps on the bottom screen and makes for a standard laptop experience, like show in the image below.

Tech innovator GELID Solutions unveils the latest LED strip kit for gaming rigs and computer workplaces. The FlexLightRGB is a product of GELID Solution Gamer product line. The FlexLightRGBcomes with 150 SMD 5050 LEDs and supports the 24 bit RGB LED Color Function for over 16.7 million RGB colors controlled in 20 static and dynamic lighting programs. All the color modes can be customized via the included RGB controller unit and IR remote. The FlexLight RGB features the 5 m long transparent strip with double-sided adhesive to fit any gaming rig, computer desk or workplace. It is made of a specially engineered shockproof and ultra-flexible polymer so you can easily roll or bend the strip body to any shape you want.

"RGB steps beyond PC, peripherals and gaming consoles. The FlexLightRGB is designed to perfectly fit your gaming workplace and enrich your modding experience with 24 bit RGB colors and vivid lighting programs", said Gebhard Scherrer, Sales Director of GELID Solutions Ltd. The FlexLightRGB is available now and has a MSRP of USD 18.99 or Euro 16.99.

When we were invited to meet Cherry at CES 2020, we expected more news on the >100 million actuation rating for their popular MX switches. CORSAIR had broken the news, in a manner of speaking, when they used the new MX Brown and MX Speed (Silver) switches in their new K95 RGB Platinum XT keyboard, and Cherry confirmed to us that all currently produced MX Red, Brown, Black, and Speed (Silver) switches are now rated to this higher count (from 50 million before) with no loss in quality. This improvement comes in the form of an increased gliding surface area on the front side of the switch stem, in addition to having eight guide rails inside for added stability, which Cherry calls "Hyperglide". The company claims to also have optimized the contact force for the gold cross-point contacts, which has now resulted in a reduced debounce rate of under 1 ms. They are working on having similar improvements done to their remaining MX switches, including the MX Blue.

What was unexpected, however, was them announcing a whole new mechanical switch series under the VIOLA name. Cherry is targeting the value-oriented keyboard market here (think well under $100) which tend to use adapted membrane switches to provide a tactile and clicky feedback under various names including mem-chanical, mechanical-like, and so on. The new VIOLA switch, which currently has a single linear switch member, is fully mechanical and uses a novel contact method that allows Cherry to get away with a lower price point. Read past the break for more on this.

Reports are flooding the web regarding Intel's total lack of reference to their upcoming Comet Lake family of CPUs, which will be branded under the Intel Core 10000 series. As reports would have it, motherboard makers had stock of LGA 1200 motherboards ready to showcase at CES, but were told to pull them in what is equivalent to a logistical "last minute". It seems that both Intel's lack of commitment to Comet Lake on its CES presentation and absence of ecosystem showcase at this year's CES might have something to do with, well, close to shame on Intel's parts.

Comet Lake will increase the maximum core count for their desktop CPUs up to 10 cores and 20 logical threads. But being built on the same 14 nm process as previous Intel generations since Skylake, there isn't much that can be done to offset increased power consumption. This is why industry sources are claiming Intel decided to skip Comet Lake at this CES - a difficulty to rein in the processors' power consumption in time for the event, with power consumption hitting 300 W. And with Intel's Core i9 10900K being configured with a PL2 (Power Level 2) of 250 W, a maximum 300 W under full load seems more than plausible.

ASRock at CES 2020 showcased their newfound commitment to AMD APUs and CPUs in the form of their new 1-liter Jupiter A320 mini-PC and the A320-M motherboard. The A320-M motherboard supports up to 65 W AMD APUs, features dual SODIMM memory sticks support, includes 1x NVMe M.2 storage slot and 1x SATA. Video outputs include 2x HDMI and one D-Sub.

ASRock also showcased their Jupiter A320 Mini-PC, which was previously an Intel-only product but will now be offered with AMD innards as well. Offering support for up to 65 W AMD APUs, the Jupiter A320 offers 2x NVMe M.2 storage expansion, 1x SATA, and 8x USB (including 2x Type C and 2x Type-A in the front panel). Video output is taken care of by 1x DisplayPort or 1x HDMI.

TERRAMASTER is democratizing 10 GbE in the consumer NAS space through aggressive cost-optimization. For small businesses, 1 GbE is no longer an acceptable network bandwidth in which multiple desktops are working on shared resources. The new F5-422 from TERRAMASTER is a 5-bay small-business NAS with a fat 10 GbE pipe, which enables data transfer-rates of up to 670 MB/s to your local network. It also features two additional 1 GbE ports with link-aggregation as a fallback. Its caddies are designed to support both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch SATA drives, without the need for adapters.

Under the hood, the F5-422 is powered by an Intel "Apollo Lake" quad-core x64 SoC (likely the Celeron J3455), running at 1.50 GHz, with 4 GB of memory that's expandable to 8 GB. The NAS supports 80 TB of total storage, or up to 16 TB per disk. It uses an aluminium alloy body with a noise-optimized single fan. TERRAMASTER's TOS 4.1 software provides a browser-based UX for the NAS. The F5-422 is priced at $600. Next up, is a new family of RAID DAS (disk-attached storage) solutions featuring Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps), targeting creative professionals working on large data-sets that need to be redundant and secured. TERRAMASTER's DAS lineup is based on a common hardware platform that features up to 1,600 MB/s of throughput, and supports up to 128 TB of aggregate storage. Models range from 2-bay, to 4-bay, 5-bay, and large 8-bay towers. These units feature aluminium-alloy bodies with grab-handles on top and 1 or 2 low-noise fans, depending on the model.

Silverstone at CES 2020 took the opportunity to showcase selections of their portfolio for the media, ranging from PC cases in major form-factors, PSUs, and a range of "ease-of-life" and aesthetic-driven accessories. Accessory-wise, there's a range of SSD-related products, such as the MS09 stick, which allows conversion of an M.2 SSD to what basically amounts to a USB 3.1 pen drive; other products in this category include the MS09-Mini and the MS11, which improves support for the NVMe protocol. The ECM26 is a PCIe adapter for M.2 sticks, while the Silverstone TP02-M2 presents itself as a heatsink for installation on non-passive-cooled M.2 SSDs.

Continuing the SSD accessories galore, there are a number of other solutions, including a tool-less NMVe to PCIe adapter (ECM21-E), an ARGB powered one (ECM24-ARGB, which includes a heatsink), a simpler, non-ARGB one with a heatsink (ECM23), and my personal favorite, a docking station for a barebones M.2 drive you may have around, in the form of the TS16 station. The presence of a Power button very surely means this can't be hot-swapped - the risk of data-loss is real.

URCDKeys brings in 2020 with a hot new sale on popular genuine, globally-valid Microsoft software. This comes just in time as Microsoft prepares to pull the plug on support for Windows 7 for most people. Get genuine Windows 10 Pro for as little as $12.73 for TechPowerUp readers, an 80% discount over prevalent prices. Why not pair it with the indispensable Office 2016 Professional Plus for a $36.50 combo price? You can also pick up a lifetime license to Office 2016 Professional Plus for $29.82 and free yourself from having to pay an annual Office 365 subscription fee. Grab these deals from the links below.

Don't forget to apply the TechPowerUp-exclusive discount code TP20 at check-out to avail the prices below.

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AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.1.1 Beta comes with follows up on the previous 19.12.3 release with an equally long list of fixes and stability improvements in the wake of AMD radically updating its driver software, particularly the Radeon Software application. Before that, 20.1.1 includes performance optimization for "Monster Hunter World: Iceborne." The company has also fixed SETI@Home result errors when using RX 5700 series GPUs. To begin with, AMD removed audible beeps for toggling of Radeon Chill, Boost, and Anti-Lag features (the beep is now optional). Radeon ReLive indication on screen timer during recordings has been disabled by default. V-sync settings now hide or disappear when Enhanced Sync is enabled, so as to not conflict with it and destabilize your gaming session. ReLive experiencing performance issues with high-resolution cameras has also been addressed. Radeon Game Advisor causing in-game CPU usage spikes has also been resolved. Issues with software updates through Radeon Software have been fixed. Also fixed is abnormal CPU usage with DuplicateDesktop process when gaming. A Radeon Software (application) crash when resuming from machine sleep has been fixed.

Radeon Software Overlay toast message persisting even when disabled, has been fixed. Stuttering issues with "Lost Ark" have been fixed. Custom stream hotkey failing to stream with Radeon ReLive has been fixed. Radeon R9 200, R9 300, and R9 Fury series GPUs experience instability in a number of games with over 120 Hz refresh-rates. This has been fixed. MJPEG video payback on RX 5700 series experiencing a green tint when viewed with WMP or Movies & TV application has been fixed. "MechWarrior 5" crashing with DXGI dialog error when using FreeSync displays over HDMI, has been fixed. DouYu live streaming with hardware-acceleration on RX 5700 series was experiencing display corruption, which has been fixed. Excessive fog/smoke effects in "Trials Rising" has been fixed. Right-eye display corruption with "Boneworks" VR has been fixed. "Resident Evil 2" flashing screen at start up in DirectX 12 mode has also been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software 20.1.1 BetaThe change-log follows.

At the 2020 International CES, Thermaltake unveiled a plethora of new gaming peripherals that include keyboards, mice, surfaces, and headsets. The star attractions here were the TK5 RGB keyboard and mouse. The keyboard has a dual-tone face-plate design that looks refreshingly new. You get a detachable cushioned palm-rest. The face-plate around the main key cluster and function keys are silvery aluminium, while one surrounding the numerical cluster, arrow and editing keys is contrasting dark aluminium. The TK5 uses a floating keycap design, with RGB LED element of each individual key producing a glow around the key. There's an acrylic RGB LED diffuser that runs along the periphery of the keyboard, too. Thermaltake is using Cherry MX Blue or MX Speed Silver switches.

The TM5 mouse is wireless, but can also be used as a wired mouse. As a wireless mouse, it supports 2.4 GHz RF (needs a dongle, but provides 10 m range and lower latency) and Bluetooth 5.0 (no dongle needed). The mouse features a palm-grip optimized ambidextrous design with 8 buttons in total. RGB LED embellishments include the scroll-wheel and an RGB element that runs along the periphery of the underside of the mouse. Under the hood is a 16,000 dpi PixArt PMW3335 sensor and Omron-made switches.

Thermaltake aspires to be a major enthusiast-segment PC memory vendor, and brought several new models of its ToughRAM RGB memory modules to the 2020 International CES. These modules are characterized by chunky aluminium heatspreaders, and an RGB LED diffuser crowning the modules. There are also some chrome accents that make to the distinct "TT" company logo. There's also the standard ToughRAM that replaces the RGB diffuser with a block of silvery aluminium. At CES we spotted new high-frequency variants, with the ToughRAM series now spanning DDR4-4400, DDR4-4266, DDR4-4000, DDR4-3600, and DDR4-3200 in standard ToughRAM and its RGB variants.

The ToughRAM RGB White Edition comes in DDR4-4400, DDR4-4266, and DDR4-4000 speeds, and in 8 GB module densities making up 16 GB dual-channel kits. Common to both lines are high-bin DRAM chips, 10-layer PCBs with 2 oz copper layers, 10 µ-thick gold electroplated contacts, and the ToughRAM software application that provides temperature, frequency, and timing monitoring; alongside the TT RGB Plus software that lets you play with colors on the ToughRAM RGB models. We also spotted the liquid-cooled WaterRAM from last year.

It's finally here: a high-end PCI-Express gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD by Samsung, made end-to-end by homebrew components. When it releases sometime later this year with a possible technical reveal in Q2, the SSD 980 will be possibly the only client-segment M.2 NVMe PCIe gen 4 SSD to feature MLC (2 bits per cell) NAND flash memory. This also means that the highest capacity on offer is just 1 TB. The company also put out sequential transfer rates: up to 6,500 MB/s reads, with up to 5,000 MB/s writes. The biggest payoffs of MLC would be sustained write performance and endurance (in its capacity class, compared to TLC and QLC).

Next up, is the Portable SSD T7 Touch, a successor to the T5 from 2017. This drive comes in an in-built fingerprint reader, letting you secure its data with your fingerprints. The drive is also a much needed update to the T5, which still uses 64-layer TLC NAND; and possibly uses the latest generation 96-layer V-NAND. The drive is built with an aluminium case that's drop-resistant up to 2 m. A single USB 3.2 connection handles power and data. The drive includes type-C to type-C and type-C to type-A cables, and will be compatible not just with PCs, but also Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets.

At a media event on Wednesday, Intel invited us to check out their first working modern discrete graphics card, the Xe DG1 Software Development Vehicle (developer-edition). Leading the event was our host Ari Rauch, Intel Vice President and General Manager for Graphics Technology Engineering and dGPU Business. Much like gruff developer-editions of game consoles released to developers several quarters ahead of market launch, the DG1-SDV allows software developers to discover and learn the Xe graphics architecture, and develop optimization processes for their current and future software within their organizations. We walked into the event expecting to see a big ugly PCB with a bare fan-heatsink and a contraption that sort-of looks like a graphics card; but were pleasantly surprised with what we saw: a rather professional product design.

What we didn't get at the event, through, was a juicy technical breakdown of the Xe graphics architecture, and its various components that add up to the GPU. We still left pleasantly surprised for what we were shown: it works! The DG1-SDV is able to play games at 1080p, even if they are technically lightweight titles like "Warframe," and aren't maxing out settings. The SDV is a 15.2 cm-long graphics card that relies on the PCI-Express slot for power entirely (and hence pulling less than 75 W).

At this year's CES, GIGABYTE has unveiled a new lineup of gaming monitors. Supposed to offer good value and high refresh rate, GIGABYTE decided to start offering 3 initial products in the form of the GIGABYTE G27F, G27QC, and G32QC. The first in the lineup is the G27F, a 27-inch 1080p monitor. It features a 144 Hz refresh rate along with support for FreeSync and G-SYNC technologies. Along with a high refresh rate, there is a 120% sRGB color saturation support. It has two integrated 2 W stereo speakers and feature GIGABYTE's auto-update, a feature which performs automatic system checkups once the monitor is connected to the PC.

Next up, two more monitors are a part of the QC Series, which brings advanced features to the table. The G27QC is a 27-inch 1440p display with 1500R curvature applied to it. It has a higher, 165 Hz refresh rate capability with 90% of DCI-P3 color saturation coverage. The display itself is also HDR capable to bring better, brighter and more vibrant colors to users. When it comes to syncing technology, it has support for AMD's FreeSync Premium and NVIDIA's G-SYNC. There are also two 2 W stereo speakers and the monitor has support for GIGABYTE's Auto-Update feature. In addition to these monitors, GIGABYTE also showed off the G32QC monitor, which takes the presented features even further. This time we are getting a 32-inch 1440p monitor with a 1500R curvature as well. It also has support for the 165 Hz refresh rate and 90% coverage of DCI-P3 color saturation standard. HDR support is also present, however, it has VESA's DisplayHDR 400 standard in place. For syncing support, there is AMD's FreeSync Premium Pro that takes the FreeSync support to another level, while G-SYNC is also present. For this model, there aren't any integrated speakers, while the support for the Auto-Update feature is still present.

Really like the "cheese grater" perforated front intakes of the latest Mac Pro, but want to stick to your PC hardware and Windows? MetallicGear has you covered with the Neo Pro. Available in two trims that look similar to "silver" and "space gray," the Neo Pro features a high air-flow front intake concealing two 140 mm fan-mounts that can hold a 280 mm x 140 mm radiator. Inside, you get a conventional horizontally-partitioned layout, with the motherboard tray supporting not just ATX, but also wider E-ATX motherboards. Unlike with the Mac Pro, though, the front panel is made of ABS. Front-panel ports are located at the top, and a tempered glass panel covers the left side. Available from some time in March 2020, the MetallicGear Neo Pro is priced at $60.

MetallicGear also showed us the Neo Matrix. This case is almost identical to the Neo Pro, but with two big differences: the most obvious one is the programmable 7 x 17 ARGB LED matrix across the front-panel; and two 120 mm exhausts along the top-panel, where you can mount a 240 mm radiator (the Neo Pro doesn't have this). Available from March 2020 alongside the Neo Pro, the Neo Matrix is priced at $100.

ECS unveiled its latest generation Liva Z3 Plus and Z3E Plus compact desktops. The two implement 15-Watt Intel Core i7 "Comet Lake-U" 6-core/12-thread processors. The only thing setting the two apart from each other is the addition of a 2.5-inch SATA drive bay on the Z3E Plus. Both models support an M.2-2280 SSD with both PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and SATA 6 Gbps wiring. An M.2 E-key slot lets you drop in 802.11ax or 802.11ac WLAN cards. Other networking options include two 1 GbE interfaces, one of which is driven by an Intel i219-V controller.

The Liva Z3 Plus series come with Amazon Alexa built in, with four A4PC (Alexa for PC) microphones listening for natural voice input, while a headset combi-jack handles the rest of the audio. USB connectivity includes three USB 3.1 gen 1, and a USB-C 3.1 gen 1. HDMI 2.0 and mini-DisplayPort 1.2 display outputs make for the rest of them.

The Tomahawk line of motherboards by MSI gained popularity in recent times on the back of high cost/performance and an aspirational feature-set for its price, but has seen competition from the likes of ASUS TUF Gaming. When MSI launched its AMD X570 chipset motherboards, a Tomahawk product was MIA. The company finally got around to one, with the MAG X570 Tomahawk Wi-Fi. In its product-stack, MSI appears to be positioning this product above the MPG X570 Gaming Plus, but a notch below the MPG X570 Gaming Edge Wi-Fi and the popular X570 Gaming Pro Carbon. The Tomahawk is equipped with a visibly bigger chipset fan-heatsink than the Gaming Plus, and a more powerful CPU VRM solution, with a 14-phase setup. You also get chunky VRM heatsinks, a metal I/O area shroud, and an integrated I/O shield.

The MAG Tomahawk X570 upstages competition with networking: 2.5 GbE wired Ethernet and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6). The 2.5 GbE interface is pulled by a Realtek 8125B-CG controller, while the WLAN is Intel AX200-family. Other noteworthy specs include two M.2 PCI-Express gen 4.0 slots with heatsinks on both; and a premium ALC1220-based onboard audio solution (which is a segment-first for the Arsenal Gaming series). The MAG Tomahawk X570 Wi-Fi will begin selling within Q1-2020, priced around $180.

One of the big hardware industry changes of 2019 was the formal spin-off of Toshiba Memory as an entirely independent firm called Kioxia. This is big, because Toshiba is regarded as the inventor of NAND flash as we know it; and a pioneering firm with DRAM, NAND flash, and other forms of solid-state storage. Toshiba retains the hard disk business. Having formally begun operations only in Q4-2019, much of Kioxia's upcoming products are in development, but we still caught some of their latest SSDs that implement PCIe gen 4.0 and NVMe 1.4 protocol, besides some former-Toshiba products under new Kioxia branding. Kioxia is planning to make a big splash in the near future as its pioneering Twin BiCS Flash tech hits the market, besides scoring design wins with the automotive and data-center industries.

The CD6 and CM6 SSDs are star-attractions. The CD6 is designed for data-centers, and comes in capacities ranging all the way from 800 GB to 15 TB, with 1 to 3 DWPD endurance. It uses the next-generation U.3 (SFF-TA-1001) connector with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 physical-layer and NVMe 1.4 protocol. Among its security features are SIE, FIPS140-2, and SED Opal/Ruby. The drive is built in the 15 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor. The CM6 is its cousin, targeted at enterprise environments with higher mission-criticality. With capacities ranging from 800 GB to a staggering 30 TB, the drive offers sequential transfer-rates of up to 6,400 MB/s by leveraging PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and NVMe 1.4. Much like the CD6, the CM6 uses the new U.3 connector, and is built in the 15 mm form-factor. Endurance and security feature-set are identical to the CD6. We also spotted the 2+ year old rebranded XD5-series and PM5-series in fresh Kioxia colors. Lastly, there are the XG6 and XG6-P SSDs from 2019 transitioned to the Kioxia brand.

Korean DRAM and NAND flash giant SK Hynix brought its latest memory innovations to the 2020 International CES. The star attraction at their booth was the "4D NAND" technology, and some of the first client-segment SSDs based on it. As a concept, 4D NAND surfaced way back in August 2018, and no, it doesn't involve the 4th dimension. Traditional 3D NAND chips use charge-trap flash (CTF) stacks spatially located next to a peripheral block that's responsible for wiring out all of those CTF stacks. In 4D NAND, the peripheral block is stacked along with the CTF stack itself, conserving real-estate on the 2-D plane (which can then be spent on increasing density). We caught two 128-layer 4D NAND-based client-segment drives inbound for 2020, the Platinum P31 M.2 NVMe, and Gold P31 M.2 NVMe. The already launched Gold S31 SATA drive was also there.

Mushkin at CES 2020 showcased their latest products, both in the storage or random access memory space. Starting with the NVMe products, the EON NVMe SSD will be available in capacities starting at 500 GB through 4 TB, and make use of 3D TLC NAND paired with Silicon Motion's SM2267 controller. It's a PCIe 4.0 x4 affair in the M.2 2280 form-factor, with built-in LDPC ECC technology. The company is quoting speeds up to 4 GB/s read and up to 3 GB/s writes, with up to 400K IOPS on either case. The EON Pro upgrades both storage capacity (available in up to a whopping 16 TB density) and speeds, leveraging Silicon Motion's SM 2264 controller. Sequential reads and writes are quoted at 6.4 GB/s and 3.9 GB/s, respectively, with 700K IOPS on both scenarios.

The Source Q, on the other hand, is a 2.5" SATA SSD, and keeps the Silicon Motion trend going with the company's SM2259XT controller. It offers up to 560 MB/s reads and 515 MB/s writes, with up to 95K read IOPS and 86K write IOPS. It will only be available in 500 GB through 2 TB capacities, which goes to show how Mushkin is prioritizing demand for their NVMe drives.

Patriot at CES 2020 showcased two new products that will be added to their portfolio in the form of the P210 and P220 SSDs. The company has already built a reputation for themselves with their high-performance VPN100 and VP4100 SSDs in the M.2 form-factor, and are now adding some budget padding to their lineup with the 2.5", SATA-based P210 and P220. The P220 will be available in up to 4 TB capacities and features Phison's S12 controller, whilst the P210 will offer only up to 2 TB maximum storage and an undisclosed next-gen SMI 2259XT Next-Gen controller.

Crucial at CES 2020 showcased their upcoming changes to their memory portfolio, with their Crucial Ballistix lineup being condensed into just three brands: Ballistix, Ballistix RGB, and Ballistix MAX. These lineups replace the company's Ballistix Sport, Tactical, and Elite products under a redesigned portfolio and aesthetic language.

Ballistix will be the mainstream memory solutions, ranging through speeds from 2400 MHz to 3600 MHz and densities of 4 GB to 32 GB. The new, modernized aluminium heatspreader design is available in black, red, or white colors, and in DIMM or SODIMM form-factors. Ballistix RGB are basically the same sticks, but with an added 8 zones and 16 LEDs of RGB lighting to the heatspreader via usage of a diffuser.

Phanteks today launches three new products: the new Eclipse P300A case, D120 Distribution Plate, and the Evolv Sound Mini speakers.

ECLIPSE P300A
Small in size and big on features, the Phanteks Eclipse P300A brings high airflow performance in a compact ATX chassis. The P300A features the Ultra-Fine Performance mesh delivering the best performance while keeping dust from entering the system. With support for standard-sized hardware in a compact size, installation is intuitive and convenient. The Eclipse P300A delivers quality and high airflow performance with exceptional value.

At CES 2020, Dell's gaming-inspired division, Alienware, had a handful of new products to showcase. Among these, we found a new product that is still in development called the Concept UFO. The UFO is a concept product that hints a new development strategy for gaming PCs, and that is a portability first approach. Inspired by Nintendo's Switch console, this computer puts gaming PCs on the go. Designed to be a handheld based solution, this PC is based on Windows 10 operating system so you can be sure that all of your existing game libraries are also playable on it as well.

Having an Intel processor as its base, the Concept UFO uses Intel's iGPU to power an 8-inch display of unknown resolution. While we don't know which architecture is powering the UFO, we speculate that Ice Lake is behind it. Our speculation is based on an assumption that, if the concept is capable of playing games, Alienware would put as high-performance iGPU as possible, and such performance is currently only found inside Intel's Ice Lake processors, in form of Intel Iris Plus integrated graphics. Frank Azor of AMD tweeted a question if anyone would like to see this product come with new AMD 4000 series of Ryzen mobile processors, so we could be in for a surprise, given that final specifications are not determined. Ryzen 4000 series would represent a perfect choice as it offers a lot of CPU and GPU power in a mere 15 W TDP package, however, we don't know what solution will be present in the end.

Kingston at the 2020 International CES shows us their upcoming mid-range M.2 NVMe SSD that has the latest PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface and NVMe 1.4 protocol, codenamed "Grandview." Later this year, this drive will be launched as a high cost-performance product under the company's marquee or HyperX brand. Available in capacities ranging between 500 GB and 2 TB, the drive is powered by Marvell "Whistler Plus" 12 nm controller that has 4 flash channels, and 1.2 GT/s per channel bandwidth. They wouldn't tell us if it's TLC or QLC NAND flash in use, or the manufacturer-rated performance numbers. The PCIe to M.2 adapter in these pictures will not be part of the package.

Also on display was "Seccos," their new PCI-Express 3.0 x4 drive that uses an unnamed 8-channel controller (likely Marvell), and 3D TLC NAND flash, with capacities ranging between 250 GB to 2 TB. Kingston put out some CDM numbers for the 1 TB model of Seccos: 3,449 MB/s sequential reads, and 2,839 MB/s sequential writes. The manufacturer-rates performance numbers are up to 3,500 MB/s reads, and up to 3,000 MB/s writes.

German PC power, casing, and cooling major be quiet! brought many new goodies to CES 2020, and we went hands on with them. The star-attraction here is their new flagship power-supply, the Dark Power Pro 12. Available in two high-wattage variants, 1,200-Watt and 1,500-Watt, this series boasts of 80 Plus Titanium certification (rare for such high wattage, including in 100-120VAC regions and not just 220-240VAC). It features fully digital power regulation across all domains. The digital power regulation covers 12 V, LLC, and PFC. It's important to note that it does not use a single +12V rail design, but rather a 6-rail design, with at least 40 A per rail. The 1500 W model features a couple of 45 A rails. There are markings on the connection dock about which specific rail is pulling a connector, so you don't end up overloading a rail.

The Dark Power Pro 12 features an "OC Mode" toggle that optimizes the PSU for overclocking. It is cooled by a 135 mm Silent Wings fan that's optimized for whisper-quiet operation. The 1200 W model provides eight 6+2 pin PCIe power connectors, while the 1500 W model provides ten of them. You get at least two 8-pin EPS connectors that aren't piggy-backing a single cable. You get all common electrical protections (over/under-voltage, overload, short-circuit, and overheat). The PSU is housed in a premium brushed aluminium body with a fine mesh over the fan intake. You get single-sleeved modular cables. be quiet! is backing this PSU with a 10-year warranty, and will launch it in February 2020 at an undisclosed price.

Lian Li unveiled a new case under its main brand, and three new models under its LanCool brand extension, besides showing off several unreleased products that could see launch later this year. We begin with the O11D Mini, a miniaturized premium cube case that's a scale-down of the O11D for the Micro-ATX form-factor. It retains the vertically partitioned layout, coupled with key design elements of the O11-series such as a contrast between piano-black tempered glass and brushed aluminium for its two compartments, plenty of room for a serious DIY liquid-cooling setup, With a Mini-ITX motherboard in place, there's room for up to three 280 mm x 140 mm radiators; up to one 280 mm x 140 mm (or smaller) and one 240 mm x 120 mm radiator when using Micro-ATX. Available from May 2020, the O11D Mini is expected to be priced under $100. But wait, there's more: this case features a replaceable rear-panel, which lets you install even ATX motherboards.

ADATA made its biggest product portfolio expansion this year with the introduction of new product lines: gaming monitors, gaming notebooks, and compact gaming desktops. To begin with, we caught the XPG Photon, a 27-inch 4K Ultra HD gaming monitor that also has some creator-friendly features such as 95% or above DCI-P3 coverage, and implementations of Burst Refresh and Vivid Color from PixelDisplay. Gamers get not just 4K UHD resolution put out by an eye-pleasing IPS panel, but also 144 Hz refresh-rate at 4K UHD. At the flick of a toggle, the monitor can also be transformed to Full HD (1920 x 1080) at 240 Hz and 600 nits brightness. The panel supports up to 1,500 nits brightness. There's no mention of localized dimming zones, and we didn't spy DisplayHDR logos anywhere. Behind, the monitor features a triangular RGB LED lighting element that can double-up as ambient light. The stand is quite another thing: a proper studio armature with a bench clamp that allows rotation and tilting along both axes, besides height adjustment.

Next up, are the XPG Xenia line of gaming notebooks in the 15.6-inch and 13-inch form-factors. Under the hood are 9th generation Core-H processors with options ranging all the way up to Core i7-9750H, graphics options that include RTX 2070 Max-Q and GTX 1660 Ti; a combination of ADATA's homebrew hand-sorted DDR4 SO-DIMM memory and SX8200 M.2 NVMe storage; and a mechanical keyboard with RGB lighting. All of these, crammed into a magnesium-alloy body. The 15.6-inch display is IPS Full HD with 144 Hz refresh-rate. Lastly, there's the XPG Gaia line of compact gaming desktops. One of its variants is built up to "Ghost Canyon" NUC specs; while the other is a more conventional socketed thin Mini-ITX fare. Both variants are 5-liter compact, and include ADATA XPG memory and SX8000-series M.2 NVMe SSDs. You add your own compatible graphics card (up to 20 cm length). On select variants you even get Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Just built a 5-figure gaming desktop using only the most expensive hardware and pairing it with plastic peripherals? Why not check out the XPG Golden Summoner - a star-attraction at ADATA's booth, this gaming keyboard features 24-Karat gold-plated keycaps, coupled with gold finish on the top metal plate. There are other faux gold bits such as the leatherette palm-rest. The Golden Summoner is a variant of the XPG Summoner keyboard ADATA launched in 2019. At CES, they showed off another dual-tone variant of the keyboard, combining an aluminium top-plate with orange keycaps and palm-rest.

ADATA XPG expanded its cooling products lineup with the Levante 360, an all-in-one, closed-loop liquid CPU cooler. You might pass this for being yet another Asetek-sourced CLC, until you find out that ADATA is including premium Nidec-sourced high air-flow PWM fans with the cooler. Its 360 mm x 120 mm aluminium radiator is plumbed to its pump-block over a sleeved rubber tubing. The pump-block is made of Asetek's Gen 6 pump-block design featuring a ceramic bearing. An ARGB illuminated XPG logo caps the pump-block. All current CPU socket types are supported, including LGA115x, AM4, LGA2066, and TR4 (using the PIB-included mounting bracket).

At CES, we went hands-on with the EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 KO graphics card, and its price came as the biggest surprise: USD $299. This could very well be NVIDIA's first response to AMD's Radeon RX 5600 XT: a new line of RTX 2060 graphics cards under $300, with RTX support being the clincher. The EVGA card looks like it's severely built to a cost. A 20-ish centimeter length, a simple twin-fan cooling solution, and just three connectors, including a legacy DVI-D. It still has a full-length back-plate. The KO ticks at NVIDIA-reference clock-speeds for the RTX 2060. EVGA is planning a premium KO Ultra SKU with factory-overclocked speeds comparable to the RTX 2060 iCX, priced at a small premium. EVGA says that the RTX 2060 KO will launch next week (January 13 or later).

At a Q&A session with the tech press in Las Vegas, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su raised hopes of a high-end graphics card based on its "Navi" family of GPUs. Responding to a specific question by Gordon Ung from PC World on whether there will be a high-end competitor in the discrete graphics space, Dr Su stated that one should expect a "high-end Navi." Dr Su states: "I know those on Reddit want a high end Navi! You should expect that we will have a high-end Navi, and that it is important to have it. The discrete graphics market, especially at the high end, is very important to us. So you should expect that we will have a high-end Navi, although I don't usually comment on unannounced products."

For months now, it's been speculated that AMD has been working on a larger GPU die than "Navi 10." In 2020, AMD is expected to release the "Navi 20" familly of GPUs built on 7 nm+ (EUV) node, based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture. The key design goals of RDNA2 are expected to be support for at least tier-1 variable-rate shading (VRS), and possibly hardware-accelerated ray-tracing. It's possible that "high-end Navi" belongs to this family of GPUs.

Phison was first to market with a client-segment PCI-Express gen 4.0 NVMe SSD controller, and as a result, the first wave of gen 4.0 M.2 SSDs have been dominated by the E16-series controller. At CES 2020, we got to see some of the first drives based on PCIe gen 4.0 controllers from other manufacturers such as Silicon Motion and InnoGrit, thanks to ADATA. With begin with the company's latest-generation XPG SAGE M.2 NVMe SSDs with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface, which come in capacities of up to 4 TB, and which are powered by InnoGrit "Rainier" IG5236 controller, belting out sequential transfer speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s reads, with up to 6,100 MB/s writes, and up to 1 million IOPS 4K random access. The drive supports the latest NVMe 1.4 protocol.

Next up is the XPG Indigo, another M.2 NVMe PCI-Express 4.0 x4 drive positioned a notch below the XPG Sage. This one uses Silicon Motion's fastest PCIe gen 4.0 client-segment controller, the SM2264. With capacities of up to 4 TB, the drive offers up to 7,000 MB/s sequential reads, up to 6,000 MB/s sequential writes, and up to 700,000 IOPS 4K random-access performance. Lastly there's the XPG Pearl, a high cost-performance model powered by the mid-range SM2267 controller which has a PCIe gen 4.0 x4 interface and DRAM cache, comes in capacities of up to 4 TB, but offers a slightly tamed performance that's comparable to E16-powered drives: up to 4,000 MB/s sequential reads, up to 3,000 MB/s sequential writes, and up to 400,000 IOPS 4K random access. The new-gen XPG Sage, XPG Indigo, and XPG Pearl will release later this year.

AKRacing at CES 2020 showcased some of their impending products. In particular, the California Gaming Chair, which should hit the market by Q2 2020 at the latest, and will be available in three versions: Laguna (white), Tahoe (Blue) and Napa (purple). The should be going for $379 when they finally hit retail, and feature a design that AKRacing says is especially appropriate for "slim/petite body types). For anyone feeling more adventurous in their choice of gaming chair, the Pro Deluxe ups the material quality to Brazilian leather (with perforated inserts for extra comfort and air circulation) for that "executive look".

The Sierra Gaming Desk is a white, Zed-designed desk with some racing stripes added to its sides for added bling effect. It features a wide, 47" wide powder-coated surface, and includes a cable management system and the back of the desk, with a bonus of a headset holder in the front.

PowerColor at CES 2020 took the opportunity provided by AMD's announcement of the RX 5600 XT graphics cards to showcase their offerings on that SKU. Based on a graphics card that AMD announced would be targeting the $279 price point, PowerColor will be launching two SKUs based on the Navi silicon: RX 5600 XT Red Devil and Red Dragon.

The RX 5700 XT Liquid Devil is based on PowerColor's RX 5700 XT started shipping back in November 25th.

Thermaltake, the leading premium brand of DIY PC components for Cooling, Gaming Gear and Enthusiast Memory solutions has announced Riing Quad 12 RGB Radiator Fan and Riing Quad 14 RGB Radiator Fan, the world's first 16.8 million 4-ring design radiator fan with 54 addressable RGB LEDs. Supports NeonMaker Light Editing Software and TT RGB PLUS Software, up to 20 of Riing Quad RGB Radiator Fan can be controlled at the same time.

The Riing Quad works with Amazon Alexa and can Sync with Razer Chroma Lighting as well as Thermaltake AI Voice Control. With a 9-Blade High-Airflow design, the Riing Quad utilizes 120 mm and 140 mm high-static pressure blade design, long-life hydraulic bearing and a PWM controlled motor to deliver remarkable acoustic and cooling performance to elevate the aesthetics of custom PC build.

iBUYPOWER, a leading manufacturer of custom gaming PCs, today announced the next generation of its signature Revolt series. The Revolt GT3 will take on a new aesthetic compared to the asymmetrical design of its predecessors.

Housing small form factor (SFF) systems and providing support for ITX motherboards and SFX power supplies up to 750 W, the Revolt GT3 will truly take on a unique layout. Systems constructed in the Revolt GT3 will be mounted to and suspended inside an outer frame by flexible rubber supports designed to add both cushion from shock and vibration damping.

Cooler Master rolled out a handful new cases at the 2020 International CES. This include a new high cost-value mid-tower called the MasterBox TD500, available in black and white trims. The case is characterized by a polygonal, asymmetric front panel that beats boring flat surfaces. A large mesh intake covers almost the entire front, from which the case breathes through three 120 mm intake fans. This spot can be used even for a 360 mm radiator. The 3-D design extends to even the precision-milled tempered glass side panel, which defies convention of being flat. Inside is a conventional horizontally-partitioned layout. Available from later this month, the MasterBox TD500 is priced at USD $89.

Next up is the massive MasterBox NR600P, a full-tower designed for workstations, HEDTs, and RGB heathens. The case supports SSI-EEB, E-ATX, and smaller form-factors. It's opaque on all sides, but there are enough vents for a basic positive pressure air-channel. Slated for May 2020, Cooler Master is pricing the case at an inviting $129. Lastly, there are the MasterBox MB311L and 320L ARGB, a pair of roomy micro-ATX gaming cases characterized by large front intakes that are dominated by a pair of RGB fans, and a horizontally-partitioned interior. The MB311L ARGB has a mesh intake, while the MasterBox MB320L ARGB has front intakes along the sides of the front panel, with a mirror-finish transparent panel along the front. Both these cases are slated for Q2-2020, priced at $40 a pop.

NVIDIA in reponse to a support question stated that it will end Quadro driver support for select Windows versions from 14th January, 2020. These include all editions of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2. NVIDIA will continue to provide driver updates that include bug fixes and security patches until 14th January. After that, NVIDIA will no longer release new Quadro drivers that support these operating systems. NVIDIA will focus on providing driver updates for Windows 10 client, enterprise, and server versions, and encourages people to upgrade. The door for extended support from specific enterprise users remains open, they are asked to contact their NVIDIA representative.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear and Enthusiast Memory solutions, today announced the release of the Floe RC360 / RC240 ARGB all in one liquid CPU & RAM cooler kit, the first in the industry to combine RAM with AIO liquid cooling, which is compatible with Thermaltake memory modules (Sold separately). Thermaltake took a leap on exploring more possibilities for providing a powerful cooling solution for memory modules.

Floe RC360 / RC240 ARGB all in one liquid CPU & RAM cooler kit allows users to maximize their overclocking performance, granting users the ability to equip a high-quality all-in-one cooling system including a water block, radiator, an ARGB controller, 3 airflow 120 mm fans on the RC360 version and 2 airflow 120 mm fans on the RC240 version. This provides the user with superior cooling performance, longer lifespan and stability.

Cooler Master unveiled several new CPU coolers this CES, including major design updates to some of its best-selling models. To begin with, the new Hyper 212 EVO is refreshed with a new V2 model. The tower-type aluminium fin-stack heatsink now comes with an asymmetric design that offsets the fin-stack away from your motherboard's memory slots. It also comes with an updated mounting bracket set for easier installation; and an updated Cooler Master SickleFlow V2 120 mm fan that comes with higher airflow, letting the designers lower RPM and noise. Available from February 2020, the Hyper 212 EVO V2 is priced at USD $36.99. Speaking of the SickleFlow V2 fan, an updated rifle-bearing frame, and updated Air Balance fan-blade design. The 120 mm spinner comes in four variants based on lighting: $7.99 for lack of it, $9.99 for red/blue single-color, $13.99 for RGB, and $16.99 for ARGB.

Next up, is the MasterAir G200P, a low-profile, top-flow cooler designed for thermal loads under 100 W. With a height of just 39.4, the cooler features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink with a copper base-plate, which is ventilated by a thin 92 mm PWM fan. Available from January 14, it is priced at $44.99. Cooler Master also refreshed the top-end of its MasterAir line of air coolers, with the new V8GTS ARGB, an "8 heat-pipe masterpiece" that uses three aluminium fin-stacks sandwiching two 140 mm fans. The heat-pipes on this thing pull heat from a vapor-chamber plate that makes contact with the CPU. Slated for June 2020 availability, the V8GTS ARGB will be priced around $89-99. The Hyper DT614 is another premium cooler: a dual fin-stack heatsink with a 140 mm fan in the middle, and a stylish metal top-plate. Available from Q2-2020, it is expected to be priced at $79 to $89.

We dedicated an article to the mighty impressive SFX Gold series that come in output models of up to 850 W. Here's the rest of Cooler Master's equally impressive new PSU lineup in conventional ATX form-factor. To begin with, the new V Gold V2 series is a refresh of the original V Gold series, and comes in a new all-white trim. Across the lineup that includes 550 W, 650 W, 750 W, and 850 W models, you get two 8-pin EPS power connectors. Cooler master also worked to reduce ripple noise output by adding in-line capacitors within connectors. Available from Q2-2020, the 550 W, 650 W, 750 W, and 850 W models are priced at $89.99, $99.99, $109.99, and $119.99, respectively.

Next up, is the company's new V Bronze line of mainstream PSUs that come in 550 W, 650 W, and 750 W models replacing the original MWE Bronze series, offer fixed cabling, but all cables barring the 24-pin ATX are flat, ribbon-type, and black. to help with airflow and aesthetics, respectively. The 80 Plus Bronze-rated PSUs are cooled by 120 mm fluid-dynamic bearing fans, and are backed by 5-year product warranties. Available from Q3-2020, the 550 W, 650 W, and 750 W models are priced at $69, $79.99, and $89.99, respectively.

Every year at CES we're impressed by just how much power SFX form-factor PSUs are able to put out. Cooler Master took a crack at the power output cieling this year with its new SFX Gold family of power-supplies. These strictly-SFX power-houses come in output variants as high as 850 W. Other models include 750 W, 650 W, and 550 W. Also on offer are 80 Plus Gold efficiency, fully modular cabling, a class-leading 10-year warranty backing up the quality. An 80 mm fluid dynamic bearing fan is used to keep the units cool, which is tuned with a noise output under 25 dBA. Available from Q1-2020, the 550 W, 650 W, 750 W, and 850 W models are priced at USD $109.99, $119.99, $129.99, and $139.99, respectively.

In 2002, Dell was dipping its toe into multimedia home entertainment and Alienware launched the industry's first gaming laptop, the Area-51m, a landmark in portable gaming. It was an amazing moment for die-hard gamers to play popular titles like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City anywhere they wanted. Power plus mobility, gamers could have it all.

Nearly two decades later, Dell and Alienware will continue showcasing their relentless commitment to gaming innovations at CES. Kicking things off with the new redesigned Dell G5 15 SE (Special Edition), the latest product in Dell's G Series portfolio for new and price-conscious gamers. You'll also learn about a new software to help monitor in-game performance without having to leave your gameplay and about our recently announced Alienware 25" Gaming Monitor, but first, the Dell G5 15 SE.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear and Enthusiast Memory solutions, today announced the release of TOUGHRAM DDR4 Memory Series which comes in new frequencies of 4,400 MHz, 4266 MHz, 4,000 MHz, 3,600 MHz, and 3,200 MHz 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) modules in both black and white editions, and the new TOUGHRAM RGB DDR4 4,400 MHz and 4266 MHz, 4,000 MHz 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) Memory Kit White Edition, which are all supported by Intel and AMD platforms.

Thermaltake stepped out of the box and made its first big attempt in delivering performance memory, with their new WaterRam Liquid Cooling Memory Series which was debuted previously at CES 2019. Now Thermaltake boasts a complete memory module line including high-frequency memory and mainstream memory modules from 3,000 MHz to 4,400 MHz. Thermaltake continues to push its limits on exploring more possibilities.

SK hynix Inc. presents its innovative semiconductor technologies leading the 4th Industrial Revolution at CES 2020, the world's largest trade show for IT and consumer electronics in Las Vegas, USA, from January 7-10, 2020. In line with its "Memory Centric World" theme, SK hynix depicts a futuristic city which effectively utilizes enormous amounts of data. The Company also showcases its semiconductor solutions across six crucial business fields - artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR), automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), big data and 5G.

Headlining at CES 2020 are SK hynix's memory solutions including HBM2E, DDR5 for servers, and SSD, which are already highly regarded and widely used in 4th industrial fields such as 5G and AI for their stability, speed, power consumption and density excellence. Other cutting-edge products set to make headlines in January are the Company's highly durable LPDDR4X and eMMC 5.1, which are optimized for automobiles. What's more, SK hynix is displaying its LPDDR5 and UFS that enhance the performance of 5G smartphones as well as CIS (CMOS Image Sensor) which is essential in establishing effective environments for AR/VR and IoT.

Intel is presenting its 2020 International CES address by CEO Bob Swan. The company pledges relentless innovation and adherence to Moore's Law to introduce new technology. This is a live-blog of the event.01:16 UTC: And that's a wrap on Intel's CES event. Not even a passing mention of Comet Lake desktop processor. They had time for athlete tracking but not their 10th gen mainstream desktop product-line. Intel has officially ceded this market to AMD!

01:10 UTC: Intel Unveils DG1, it's first discrete GPU in the mobile form-factor. Can work in tandem with iGPU.

AMD will update its 3rd generation Ryzen Threadripper product stack sooner than expected. The flagship 64-core/128-thread Ryzen Threadripper 3990X will be available to purchase on February 7, 2020, priced at USD $3,990. The company debuted the "Zen 2" based 3rd gen Threadripper family last November with the 24-core Threadripper 3960X and the 32-core Threadripper 3970X, while teasing the 64-core flagship, the 3990X. AMD detailed this halo-flagship product some more at its 2020 CES event. Designed for the TRX40 platform in the sTRX4 package, the 3990X is differentiated from 64-core EPYC "Rome" products with its narrower monolithic quad-channel memory interface (compared to 8-channel for EPYCs).

The Ryzen Threadripper 3990X ships with clock-speeds of 2.90 GHz with 4.30 GHz boost, a gargantuan 288 MB of total cache (L2 + L3), and the same I/O as the 3970X: 4-channel memory interface with support for up to 2 TB of memory; a PCI-Express 4.0 x8 pipe to the TRX40 chipset, and up to three gen 4.0 x16 links to the processor package. AMD also showed a performance sneak-peak, comparing a machine with a single 3990X squaring off against a machine with 2P Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 processors that add up to 56 cores and 112 threads. In the side-by-side V-Ray render test, the 3990X emerged 30% faster than the Intel setup, but here's the kicker: the 3990X "only" costs $3,990, versus $20,000 for the 2P Xeon 8280 (processors alone). The HEDT chip also supports ECC memory.

At this year's CES, ASUS announced the latest addition to their TUG gaming lineup of laptops - two 15-inch TUF Gaming A15 and TUF Gaming F15, and two 17-inch TUF Gaming A17 and TUF Gaming F17. Being advertised as durable, high-performance gaming laptops, the TUF lineup is here to bring "unprecedented experience for the price" meaning that the pricing of these models will be more than adequate for what they offer. Inside these new machines are the latest mobile processors from both Intel and AMD. The "A" series, as it is called, is an AMD based solution that features Ryzen 4000 series of mobile processors, which can be configured to go up to 8 cores and 16 threads, while the so-called "F" series is based on Intel's 10th generation of Core processors, which can be configured to go up to 6 cores and 12 threads.

At this year's CES, the ASUS Republic of Gamers announced the latest additions to the Zephyrus family of ultra-portable gaming laptops. Designed with portability in mind, these laptops are packing a lot of hardware in a body that is less than 20 mm thick. The G14 model is a 17.9 mm thin power-house capable of a lot more than its size would suggest. Packing AMD's latest Ryzen 7 4800HS processor, built on 7 nm "Zen 2" architecture with 8 cores and 16 threads, the G14 laptop is paired with NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 2060 GPU with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory.

The Ryzen processors used in Zephyrus laptops are special edition models, which are configured to run at lower 35 W TDP, instead of 45 W like the regular Ryzen 7 4800HS, with the same performance. This is due to the 6 months exclusive ASUS had on these processors, so they now able to use them in their designs to lower power consumption and improve battery life. This Zephyrus G14 laptop features two 14-inch display options to choose from - one 1080p IPS panel with 120 Hz refresh rate, Pantone validated FreeSync display and one 1440p IPS display that is capable of 60 Hz refreshing and also features Pantone validation with FreeSync technology.

AMD today announced its Ryzen 4000-series mobile processors designed to compete with Intel's fastest, across both its 10th gen "Ice Lake" and "Comet Lake" mobile processors lines. At the heart of these processors is the 7 nm "Renoir" silicon, which doubles the CPU core count over the previous generation "Picasso," and improves IPC (single-thread performance) by a double-digit percentage. "Renoir" combines a CPU with 8 cores based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, with an iGPU that has the number-crunching machinery of "Vega," but with display- and multimedia-engines of "Navi." It is a monolithic piece of silicon with a dual-channel IMC that supports not just conventional DDR4 memory, but also fast LPDDR4X.

There are two distinct classes of Ryzen 4000 Mobile: U and H. The Ryzen 7 4800U, with its 15 W TDP, targets ultra-portable notebooks, and goes head-on against Intel's Core i7 "Ice Lake-U" processors, winning on the CPU front with its high core-count and IPC. The Ryzen 7 4800H, on the other hand, taps into the 45 W TDP headroom to dial up CPU and iGPU clock-speeds significantly, offering CPU performance that beats the desktop Core i7-9700K. It also introduces SmartShift, an iGPU + dGPU virtualization technology that lets your notebook dynamically switch between the two based on graphics load.

AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su at the company's 2020 International CES address announced the company's e-sports flagship graphics card, the Radeon RX 5600 XT. This card is designed to dominate the sub-$300 market-segment that's been led by NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660-series. Based on 7 nm "Navi" silicon, the RX 5600 XT has surprisingly powerful specs: 2,304 stream processors across 36 RDNA compute units, which is the same as the RX 5700, but with some cost-cutting in the way of memory: 6 GB of GDDR6 across a 192-bit wide memory interface, and 12 Gbps memory speed. The GPU has a gaming engine clock of roughly 1500 MHz. Other key specs include 144 TMUs and 48 ROPs.

Designed with a 150 W typical board power target, the card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. The RX 5600 XT is designed to provide 1080p e-sports gaming at high refresh-rates, or 1440p gaming at reasonable graphics settings. In its presentation, AMD showed the RX 5600 XT beating the GTX 1660 Ti that leads NVIDIA's GTX 16-series. With a price of USD $279 SEP, which is on-par with that of the GTX 1660 Ti, AMD looks to bring some serious competition to the $200-300 market-segment. Available January 21, 2020.

We're live from the International CES 2020 and AMD's keynote address by CEO Dr Lisa Su. AMD is expected to announce new products such as its next-generation APU, a new e-sports graphics card, and teasers for its upcoming products. This is a live-blog article that will be continually updated through the event.

21:58 UTC: The show begins in a packed house with long queues leading up

Jan 6th: Dr Su takes centerstage.

Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox division at Microsoft, posted a picture of the semi-custom SoC at the heart of the company's upcoming "Project Scarlett" Xbox Series X game console as his Twitter avatar. The picture reveals a chip that looks visibly similar to that of "Project Scorpio" (Xbox One X). The picture was also taken from an angle that reveals the pinkish/auburn tinge of 7 nm AMD chips made at TSMC. You'll find the same tinge on chips such as "Navi 10" when viewed from an angle. The die unabashedly bears the "Project Scarlett" and "8K" markings.

Next-generation game consoles are marketing 4K 60 Hz and 8K gaming capability. They likely use a combination of dynamic resolution-scale and variable rate shading to achieve this. The "Project Scarlett" SoC is a semi-custom chip co-designed by Microsoft and AMD, and uses CPU cores based on the company's "Zen 2" microarchitecture, combined with a powerful GPU based on RDNA2, which features hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and variable-rate shading. Hardware enthusiasts on Twitter are abuzz with estimating the die-size of the SoC, with calculations pinning it around the 350 mm² mark ±10 mm², or roughly similar to that of "Project Scorpio," but one must factor in the switch to 7 nm from 16 nm significantly increasing transistor-density.

Elgato, the leading provider of hardware and software for content creators, today announced the launch of both Elgato 4K60 S+, a cutting-edge external 4K60 HDR10 capture solution capable of standalone SD card recording, and Elgato Key Light Air, a compact model of the wildly popular Key Light LED panel. Elgato's parent company CORSAIR also announced the K95 RGB PLATINUM XT mechanical gaming keyboard - the first keyboard to integrate Elgato Stream Deck software, enabling powerful instant control of streaming apps and devices at just the press of a key.

4K60 S+ debuts as Elgato's most powerful external capture device yet. In addition to USB 3.0 connectivity for live streaming via a PC, 4K60 S+ features a memory card slot to record gorgeous 4K60 HDR10 gameplay directly to an SD card without the need for a connected computer. Onboard HEVC encoding keeps file sizes manageable, while true zero-lag passthrough displays high-fidelity Xbox One X and PS4 Pro games in their original format for an uninterrupted, authentic gaming experience.

While many users were likely expecting AMD to launch their lower-tier alternatives B550 and A520 chipset solutions for their Ryzen 2 CPUs shortly after their release to the market last year, users who want to pair a more inexpensive motherboard have had to wait in the rain until now. At the time, industry sources pointed towards fabrication of ASMedia's B550 and A520 chipsets for the AM4 platform to begin shipping to motherboard manufacturers in Q4 2019.

Now, new reports say that production of these chipsets (simpler in features, and thus, in price, whilst also not requiring active cooling) will only begin in Q1 2020, which means likely retail availability (at least in significant volumes) in Q2 at the earliest. It seems that users will, for the time being, have to make do with the usually top-of-the-line chipset option for the AMD platform - which is, coincidentally, the one with bigger margins for AMD.

CORSAIR, a world leader in high-performance gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today launched a range of new additions to its lineup of high-performance CPU coolers, able to handle the rising temperature demands of increasingly powerful desktop processors. The A500 Dual Fan CPU Cooler utilizes a quad direct-contact heat pipe design for ultra-high heat dispersion, with a unique slide-and-lock fan mount system to adjust fan height. The iCUE RGB PRO XT Series is the latest family of CORSAIR's renowned all-in-one liquid CPU coolers, combining powerful and quiet cooling with dynamic RGB lighting in radiator sizes up to 360 mm, capable of taming the high temps of even the most thermally intensive CPUs such as the recently released 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper Series.

The A500 Dual Fan CPU Cooler is a high-performance air cooler, combining low-noise operation with dark styling and an innovative fan mounting system. Able to cool CPUs up to 250 W TDP, the A500 is equipped with four direct-contact heat pipes and two CORSAIR ML120 magnetic levitation bearing fans, controllable via PWM for precise adjustment of fan speeds between 400 RPM and 2,400 RPM. The fans sit within a ratcheting slide-and-lock fan mount, allowing for a variable fan height to accommodate a wide range of DRAM. The A500 is easy to install and stays firmly in place thanks to the CORSAIR HoldFast retention system, and is compatible with AM4, AM3, FM2, LGA115x, and LGA20xx CPUs.

The world's biggest consumer technology show is this week in Las Vegas, and NVIDIA is there showing off a host of new GeForce gaming tech, including several features that we are delivering today via a new CES 2020 Game Ready Driver. Variable Rate Supersampling will improve your VR gaming, a new Freestyle Splitscreen filter will let you further customize your creations, Max Frame Rate gives you an easy way to cap performance, and we've further improved our popular Image Sharpening feature.

In addition, the CES 2020 Game Ready Driver includes support for Wolfenstein: Youngblood's new update that adds ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Highlights; support for Quake II RTX's latest update, which adds a cool new feature; and support for 8 new G-SYNC Compatible gaming monitors.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce v441.87 WHQL CES Game Ready Driver

ViewSonic today unveiled a massive 55-inch OLED gaming monitor that's sure to tick all of the boxes - including (likely) that of most expensive monitor money can buy. The XG550 is an OLED-based, 55" gaming monitor with 4K resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate - alongside a pretty amazing 0.5 ms quoted response time. The fact that it offers 99% coverage of DCI color-space is just icing on the cake for any creative professionals, although I'd imagine they'd much enjoy an 8K presentation on that diagonal size (hey, we can always ask for more, can't we?).

The monitor also supports RGB lighting on a LED emitter on the back of the display (sadly, nothing like Philip's Ambilight, but hey, it at least serves to make your gaming area more interesting; and it's compatible with Razer Chroma). No word on pricing, but ViewSonic expects the Xg550 to be available come 4Q 2020.

At the 2020 International CES, Dell unveiled its latest monitor for graphics professionals, the UltraSharp PremierColor UP2720Q. This 27-inch monitor features an in-built colorimeter for color-caliberation, besides support for CalMAN, which lets you caliberate color with an external colorimeter. The UP2720Q offers 100% Adobe RGB coverage, besides 98% DCI-P3, and 80% BT.2020. The 27-inch 4K Ulra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) monitor also supports Thunderbolt 3, letting you daisy-chain it with other devices.

Micron has today announced that it started sampling RDIMMs based on DDR5 technology to its industry partners. Designed for server operations, these DDR5 modules come in RDIMM form-factor and feature Error-Correcting Code (ECC) technology for removing any error that occurs inside electronic circuits. The new DDR5 standard offers a massive performance uplift compared to the previous generation of DDR4 memory. For starters, DDR5 will double the MT/s transfer rate to 6400 MT/s, double the speed of the original 3200 MT/s speed for DDR4 that was established by JEDEC. The bandwidth of the new DDR memory is supposed to be 32 GB/s, which is 25% faster than the original 25.6 GB/s bandwidth of DDR4.

With DDR5, the SDRAM prefetch buffer data size is being doubled to 16 data words per memory access, making for a 16n prefetching throughput. Another improvement is that the highest possible density for DDR5 chips is now being up to 64 Gb per chip. Additionally, DDR5 is supposed to bring the power needed for chip operation down to 1.1 volts, which is around 8% lower than what DDR4 achieved. There are also features like MIR (Mirror Pin) which provides better DIMM signaling, and more options for PRECHARGE and REFRESH commands that can now operate on a per bank basis, so specific banks can be refreshed in bank group. It is also worth pointing out that DDR5 chips are manufactured using 1znm memory manufacturing process.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, is excited to announce the launch of View 51 TG ARGB mid-tower and AH T600 TG open frame gaming chassis and will be showcased in Thermaltake booth in CES 2020. View 51 and AH T600 reflect the determination from Thermaltake to create a broader range of enthusiastic gaming cases which are based on gamers, modders and enthusiasts' demands. View 51 is designed to fulfill gamers who love hardcore water-cooling while AH T600 makes a bold statement as open frame chassis concept utilizing a leading-edge aesthetic and powerful air-cooling design.

View 51 that tailor-made for advance water cooling and features two 200 mm ARGB PWM fan at the front of the case and one 120 mm ARGB fan at the rear as a standard option. The case is wrapped in three sheets of 4 mm tempered glass panels for a transparent view into the front, side and top. Combined with support for quad 360 mm radiators at the top, front, side and bottom of the case, the smoked tempered glass and RGB fans contrast perfectly against the View 51's DUAL-CHAMBER design available in either black or white.

Puro Sound Labs, the world's leading manufacturer of premium, safe headphones today announces two new products aimed at providing a wonderful listening experience and peace of mind to listeners everywhere. Debuting their PuroPro and PuroSport headphones at CES 2020, Puro Sound Labs now not only provides a safe listening environment for children, but for older teens and adults as well.

PuroPro
With their new PuroPro headphones, Puro Sound Labs has officially entered the realm of Bluetooth wireless ANC headphones for adults, while promoting healthy ears and protecting hearing, as well. The PuroPro headphones provide a safe listening environment by limiting the maximum volume to 85dB/95dB. According to some of the nation's top health organizations, including the Hearing Health Foundation, OSHA, World Health Organization, American Speech Pathology Association, and many others, 85 dB is the maximum safe listening volume for up to 8 hours, and 95dB is safe for up to 50 minutes a day.

iBUYPOWER, a leading manufacturer of custom gaming PCs, today announced the expansion of its signature Element case line. The Element CL will be designed for easy integration of hardline custom cooling curated for pre-built systems while the Element Dual will provide users with ample thermal support and a clean internal layout for both pre-built systems and DIY enthusiasts.

Element Dual
For a different take on the traditional PC layout, the iBUYPOWER Element Dual features a binary chamber design. With the PSU mounted vertically on the bottom right side of the case and hidden behind the motherboard tray, users will be left with an open aesthetic on the left side and substantial space for maximum component compatibility; including: E-ATX and ATX motherboards, up to 400 mm GPUs and 155 mm CPU air coolers.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today introduced Galaxy Chromebook, a premium 2-in-1 device that sets a higher standard in mobile computing. This new entrant to the Galaxy Computing portfolio redefines what a Chromebook can be. As the thinnest Samsung Chromebook ever released, it combines the best of Samsung technical innovation - such as an AMOLED display and built-in-pen support, offering users new ways to take advantage of Chrome OS experience that is simple, fast, and seamless.

"The notion that we do everything stationary at a desk is a thing of the past, and people need premium devices built for our new reality," said Alanna Cotton, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Samsung Electronics America. "By offering a seamless, premium user experience, Galaxy Chromebook helps you effortlessly switch between streaming, creative projects, word processing, and more."

Today, at CES 2020, ASUS debuted its latest VivoBook and ZenBook laptop refreshes. The first in the lineup is the VivoBook S series, which is consisting out of VivoBook S333, S433 and S533 models. At the heart of these new laptops is the latest 10th generation of processors from Intel that is giving the ultra-portable notebooks power to perform everyday tasks with ease. In some configurations like S433 and S533, there is a choice of Core i7 and Core i5 Comet Lake CPUs, while the S333 model is rocking Ice Lake at its core. For Comet Lake configurations, there is a choice of Intel Core i7-10510U or Core i5-10210U processor, while Ice Lake powered models have a choice between Intel Core i7-1065G7 or Core i5-1035G1 processors. As far as graphics power goes, users can choose to use Intel iGPU, or add NVIDIA MX series GPU for an additional price increase.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, is thrilled to present a new member to the S Series family - the S300 Tempered Glass Mid Tower Chassis which comes in simple black and elegant white. Inherits the same luxurious touch from the S series, S300 TG's sleek exterior has a minimalistic design; with the metallic surface and the high-quality 4 mm tempered glass side panel, it can be both simple and playful. Top-front I/O ports placement provides sufficient practicability and a preinstalled 120 mm rear fan for competent ventilation.

Magnetic removable filters on the top, right, and bottom not only offer extra airflow but excellent protection against dirt or dust. Our well-designed interior spacing, rotational PCI-E slots, and removable PSU cover allow users to install hardware effortlessly and arrange the components as you wish. S300 TG also serves outstanding liquid cooling expansions and advanced cable management with affordable pricing. If you are looking for a fashionable, contemporary designed chassis, but still hoping to display the components, S300 TG will be the premium option to go.

During this year's CES, Intel had an event called the Performance Workshop, where many things were presented. Among those are Intel's upcoming Comet Lake-H CPUs, Ghost Canyon NUC 9, and last but not the least there was a mention of the future Tiger Lake processor and its AI performance. Starting with the Comet Lake-H announcement, Intel promised to deliver 8 core, 16 thread processors that are capable of reaching as high as 5 GHz clock speeds, in a 45 W TDP. These processors are the answer to AMD's upcoming "Renoir" Ryzen 4000 series of mobile processors, which are rumored to feature up to 8 cores and 16 threads as well. The advertised 5 GHz boost on these Comet Lake-H CPUs is for the Core i7 model, while Core i9 SKUs are supposed to reach even higher speeds. All the system improvements tied to Comet Lake like support for WiFi 6, Thunderbolt 3 and Optane memory support are also present on these CPUs.

In the world of competitive gaming, where mere milliseconds can make the difference between victory and defeat, NVIDIA today unveiled new G-SYNC displays with a 360 Hz refresh rate, providing esports enthusiasts and competitive gamers with the fastest gaming displays ever made. At 360 Hz, game frames are displayed once every 2.8 ms—up to 6X faster than traditional gaming displays and TVs.

NVIDIA and ASUS are showcasing the world's first G-SYNC 360Hz display--the ASUS ROG Swift 360--at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The display, which will be available later this year, pairs perfectly with GeForce RTX, the world's fastest gaming GPUs, to deliver the absolute best competitive gaming experience.

LG at its pre-CES show showed off the UltraGear 38GL950G it announced back in September, a 38-inch curved ultrawide monitor that's recommended for motorsport gaming (racing games). With a 21:9 aspect ratio, and WQHD+ (3840 x 1600 pixels) resolution, the 38GL950G offers 144 Hz refresh-rate (up to 175 Hz possible with overclocking), and 1 ms response-time. The monitor is also NVIDIA G-SYNC compatible. The Nano IPS panel provides 98% DCI-P3 coverage and is DisplayHDR 400 certified. Also featured is Sphere Lighting 2.0, the latest version of LG's ambient lighting technology that uses circular RGB LED diffusers behind the panel.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions is thrilled to introduce a new line-up of pre-built PCs to empower creators, artists, and multimedia professionals with the introduction of the new ProMaster line from COLORFUL. The ProMaster H1 PC is designed to bring creators and professionals a ready-made solution so they can focus on what matters: to start creating.

Based on NVIDIA RTX Studio, COLORFUL ProMaster H1 features the latest GeForce RTX SUPER GPUs from NVIDIA, bolstered by COLORFUL engineering for maximum performance and dependability and is complimented by an 8-core 9th-generation Intel Core i7 9700F processor. Easily multitask and handle large files with memory options up to 64 GB DDR4 memory and storage combos of up to 1 TB NVMe SSDs an a 2 TB HDD. The premium built body features soft, dampening fabric on the side panels for a premium look. The ProMaster also comes with Intel Optane technology for a more responsive feel and comes with D5 Fusion software out of the box.

Besides its flagship ROG Swift PG32UQX flagship display, ASUS unveiled the ROG Swift PG43UQ, a larger 43-inch gaming display that's reasonably heavy on the specs sheet. Its 43-inch non-glare VA panel offers "G-SYNC Compatible" readiness, 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) resolution, 144 Hz refresh-rate, 1 ms response-time, and DisplayHDR 1000 certification (1,000 cd/m² maximum brightness). It uses DisplayPort 1.4 with DSC to enable all its features, and is TUV Rheinland certified for low blue-light and flicker-free brightness adjustment.

ASUS also unveiled the ProArt PA27UCX, a 27-inch professional graphics monitor for high-grade content creation. Among its long list of panel specs are 4K UHD (3840 x 2160 pixels) resolution, 10 bpc color (1.07 billion colors) covering 97% DCI-P3, 99.5% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB, and 83% Rec. 2020. In addition, it is DisplayHDR 1000 certified with 576 dimming zones, along with support for HDR-10 HLG and Dolby Vision. One of its key features is USB-C input support, with a single cable providing display signal, USB data transfer, and power-delivery for the monitor. Flicker-free and low blue-light mode make for the rest of it.

ASUS today showed off its latest flagship gaming monitor for bleeding-edge resolution and speed, the ROG Swift PF32UQX. This 32-inch flat-screen boasts of specs made of dreams: non-glare IPS panel, support for NVIDIA G-SYNC Ultimate (hardware G-SYNC), the highest-grade DisplayHDR 1400 certification with 1,400 cd/m² maximum brightness and 1,152 local dimming zones, 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) resolution, and 144 Hz refresh-rate. The included DisplayPort 1.4 cable is required to let the monitor work its magic, besides three HDMI 2.0 inputs. The monitor also offers 90% DCI-P3 color gamut. The monitor will also pack all ROG-exclusive features from ASUS.

Shure in its pre-CES show unveiled the Aonic 215, a pair of true-wireless in-ear monitors that's out to compete with the likes of the AirPods Pro. Each of its two ends features a conventional IEM-like design with replaceable heads, which plug into a stock that runs behind your pinna. This extends to a lobe that contains the battery and the earphone's wireless hardware. Shure promises up to 8 hours of listening on a full charge, and quality on-par with with high-quality wired earphones. As with most other true-wireless earphones, the case of the Aonic 215 doubles up as a recharging dock. It comes with a leatherette exterior and a zipper.

Dell Technologies today unveiled new products and software across its premium Latitude, XPS and displays portfolios to help people innovate, collaborate and accomplish more in the next decade. Featuring artificial intelligence (AI), 5G and innovative design, the latest Dell Technologies' PCs and displays make work and play more seamless, intelligent and enjoyable.

"The PC industry has never been more vibrant with built-in AI, 5G and the best design we've ever seen, all to help make our lives easier and more fulfilled," said Sam Burd, president of Dell Client Solutions Group. "What's exciting to me is that, with all of the cool news we'll see come out of CES next week, the PC plays a central role in helping people innovate, influence and achieve more."

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the global leader in the gaming monitor market, today introduced its new line-up of groundbreaking curved Odyssey gaming monitors at CES 2020. The new line-up has been completely re-imagined with gamers in mind, including radically new curved displays and industry-leading performance features for a whole new way to game.

Comprised of the G9 model - with an industry-leading 49" display - and the G7, available in 32" and 27", both Odyssey gaming monitors are completely redesigned and take immersive gaming to the next level. Both monitors feature an extremely deep curvature - the first ever monitors to possess a high-performance 1000R curvature stunning QLED picture quality.

AMD veterans yesterday must've sneakily left their respective offices yesterday for a well-deserved rest and a glass of champagne - and if they didn't, they deserved it. The company yesterday broke their previous all-time stock pricing record achieved way back in June 2000, at $47.50 per share, when it traded at $49.10 per share yesterday.

It's been a long time coming for AMD, and irrespective of any brand loyalty, it certainly pays, as a consumer and as an enthusiast, to see a company that nearly went bankrupt in 2016 - who had to sell and then lease back their own headquarters for a quick cash infusion, spin-off its manufacturing division in a change of strategy that couldn't have been easy on morale - achieve such a colossal feat. Even more impressive this is should you even be considering the blue behemoth the company actually has to contend with - a $260.35B Intel who, by both happenstance and poor CPU execution vision, is being fired upon on all markets by comparative David AMD, today valued at $51.07B. Here's hoping all AMD employees got their well-deserved party and standing ovation from each other. None of them - not even Lisa Su - achieved this alone.

Not content to let AsRock call out all of the enthusiast's attention for today, XFX has (perhaps not so inadvertently) leaked their upcoming interpretation of the AMD RX 5600 XT. Named the THICC II PRO STAGING (that's somewhere between a mouthful and two), it apparently features the same cooling solution as the RX 5500 XT THICC II PRO as well as a similar color scheme - black and bronze. According to XFX, the RX 5600 XT does indeed feature 2304 Stream Processors and 6 GB of 12 Gbps GDDR6 in a 192-bit memory configuration.

The graphics card isn't actually that bad of a looker with its rounded edges and almost full-black industrial design. XFX are quoting a game clock at 1460 MHz, which is higher than what has been leaked as the AMD reference. Video output includes 1x HDMI and 3x DisplayPort. XFX offers a three year limited warranty on the graphics card.

Here's the first press-shot of an upcoming Radeon RX 5600 XT custom-design graphics card, this one from ASRock. The RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming OC appears to combine a compact PCB with a long triple-fan cooling solution that's 29 cm in length. The cooling solution features an aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by a trio of 80 mm spinners. The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, indicating a significantly lower power draw target than the RX 5700-series. The card's box confirms 6 GB of GDDR6 memory, and factory-overclocked speeds, which according to VideoCardz are 1560 MHz gaming.

From an older report, we know that the RX 5600 XT is designed to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. It's armed with 2,304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, possibly 48 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface holding 6 GB of memory, which ticks at 12 Gbps. The RX 5600 XT appears to be carved from the 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon, with a quarter of its memory interface disabled. AMD is expected to debut the card at its International CES 2020 presser, later this month.

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As we approach the release of NVIDIA's Ampere GPUs, which are rumored to launch in the second half of this year, more rumors and information about the upcoming graphics cards are appearing. Today, according to the latest report made by Taipei Times, NVIDIA's next-generation of graphics cards based on "Ampere" architecture is rumored to have as much as 50% performance uplift compared to the previous generations of Turing GPUs, while using having half the power consumption.

Built using Samsung's 7 nm manufacturing node, Ampere is poised to be the new king among all future GPUs. The rumored 50% performance increase is not impossible, due to features and improvements that the new 7 nm manufacturing node brings. If utilizing the density alone, NVIDIA can extract at least 50% extra performance that is due to the use of a smaller node. However, performance should increase even further because Ampere will bring new architecture as well. Combining a new manufacturing node and new microarchitecture, Ampere will reduce power consumption in half, making for a very efficient GPU solution. We still don't know if the performance will increase mostly for ray tracing applications, or will NVIDIA put the focus on general graphics performance.

AMD in the second half of 2020 could outpace Apple as the biggest foundry customer of TSMC for its 7 nm silicon fabrication nodes (DUV and EUV combined). There are two key factors contributing to this: AMD significantly increasing its orders for the year; and Apple transitioning to TSMC's 5 nm node for its A14 SoC, freeing up some 7 nm allocation, which AMD grabbed. AMD is currently tapping into 7 nm DUV for its "Zen 2" chiplet, "Navi 10," and "Navi 14" GPU dies. The company could continue to order 7 nm DUV until these products reach EOL; while also introducing the new "Renoir" APU die on the process. The foundry's new 7 nm+ (EUV) node will be utilized for "Zen 3" chiplets and "Navi 2#" GPU dies in 2020.

Currently, the top-5 customers for TSMC 7 nm are Apple, HiSilicon, Qualcomm, AMD, and MediaTek. Barring AMD, the others in the top-5 build mobile SoCs or 4G/5G modem chips on the node. AMD is expected to top the list as it scales up orders with TSMC. In the first half of 2020, TSMC's monthly output for 7 nm is expected to grow to 110,000 wafers per month (wpm). Apple's migration to 5 nm in 2H-2020, coupled with capacity-addition could take TSMC's 7 nm output to 140,000 wpm. AMD has reportedly booked the entire capacity-addition for 30,000 wpm, taking its allocation up to 21% in 2H-2020. Qualcomm is switching to Samsung for its next-generation SoCs and modems designed for 7 nm EUV. NVIDIA, too, is expected to built its next-gen 7 nm EUV GPUs on Samsung instead of TSMC. These moves by big players could free up significant foundry allocation at TSMC for AMD's volumes to grow in 2020.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today introduced Galaxy Book Flex α (alpha), a new variant of Galaxy Book Flex that offers long-lasting battery, immersive QLED display, and exquisite design features at a competitive price-point. Today's consumers are constantly striving to blend their personal and work lives - and everything in between. Galaxy Book Flex α is the latest installment in Samsung's new line of Galaxy Computing devices, which combine the productivity and premium experience of a laptop with the mobility and flexibility of a smartphone.

"We all have different routines, and we need technology that works the way we work, and with our new Galaxy Computing line, we're giving consumers the ability to choose a PC that meets their unique needs," said Alanna Cotton, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Samsung Electronics America. "Galaxy Book Flex α is a stellar new variant of the Galaxy Computing line, offering many of the best design, hardware, and display features at an accessible price-point."

BIOSTAR have left out a teaser trailer for a new motherboard, which seemingly packs an improvement to the company's RGB design on the heatsinks surrounding the CPU area. While this could simply be a new product announcement for an already existing motherboard lineup, we know fully well that Intel is gearing up for the announcement of their Comet Lake-S family of CPUs, which have already been broadly approached in this publication. It makes sense for motherboard companies, who are certainly already privy to the new Intel platform specifications, to start teasing the new features they've come up with to accompany a new generation of motherboards.

Intel's Comet Lake-S family will introduce builders to the new Intel LGA 1200 socket (some things never do change). The new 10000 series CPUs should see another core bump through the lineup, with the top of the line Core I9-10900K CPU sporting a reported 125 W TDP running through its 10-core, 20-thread design. Considering the number of leaks and additional information that has been recently coming to light regarding Intel's latest CPU launch, it seems plausible that the company is gearing up to an announcement, and as such, motherboard makers are also flexing their marketing muscles to get in the first wave of sales.