Have you ever wondered how a laptop with a desktop CPU that has 16 cores and 32 threads would look like on a laptop? Well, today is your lucky day as XMG, a German laptop maker, has decided to launch a laptop that has AMD's latest and greatest desktop CPU - the Ryzen 3950X 16C/32T monster. The 3950X CPU, while featuring a regular TDP of 105 W, has been configured to 65 W in Eco Mode, and it runs anywhere from 2.6 to 4.2 GHz. The CPU also isn't soldered to the motherboard and there is a full AM4 socket, that is capable of housing any 3000 series desktop CPU.

Besides a powerful CPU, there are options for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or RTX 2070 graphics cards, which drive a 15.6-inch Full HD 144 Hz IPS panel equipped with anti-glare technology. The GPUs are a "Max-P incarnation" as XMG calls it, which presumably means that they are designed for maximum performance i.e. possibly higher boost speeds. Additionally, you can configure the laptop with up to 64 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz RAM. This configuration, containing Ryzen 9 3950X, RTX 2070, 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB NVM, costs around 2631 EUR. For more configuration options, you can check out this website. Availability is supposed to be in 6-8 weeks.

MAINGEAR, an award-winning PC system integrator of custom gaming desktops, notebooks, and workstations — today launched the new and improved RUSH full-tower desktop. MAINGEAR's most advanced gaming PC ever built is the latest addition to the ASUS ROG (Republic of Gamers) certified family of elite gaming hardware. Featuring next-generation custom APEX liquid cooling, and support for the most extreme hardware available, the MAINGEAR RUSH raises the bar for enthusiasts everywhere.

The RUSH is MAINGEAR's new ultimate gaming PC, with a bold, premium design that supports the most powerful graphics configurations from NVIDIA and the full line of desktop processors available from Intel and AMD. Buyers can choose from a carefully curated selection of the best gaming components on the market to drive today's hottest games at high-framerates and in 4K (or higher) resolutions.

Samsung Display, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics that develops and manufactures display panels, is reportedly ending the manufacturing of all its LCD panel products by the end of 2020. These include TN-film, various kinds of VA, and IPS. This would see an end to even LED-backlit LCD panels that make up a bulk of the company's low-cost PC monitors and TVs. The company will focus on more advanced panel technologies, such as AMOLED and QLED. Samsung manufactures LCD panels at plants in South Korea and China. With LCD being phased out, the production lines will be re-tooled to manufacture quantum-dot LED (QLED) panels. The company will spend the rest of 2020 shipping out pending orders of LCD panels.

In Win today rolled out the 216 mid-tower chassis. Featuring a conventional design, the 216 is characterized by a brushed aluminium accent that runs along the height of the left corner of the front panel. Matte black makes up the bulk of the front and right side panels, while tinted tempered glass covers the left side. Inside, you'll get a contemporary horizontally paritioned layout. The upper compartment with the motherboard tray has room for motherboards with up to E-ATX width, CPU coolers up to 16.6 cm in height, and graphics cards up to 38 cm in length. Besides the seven normally positioned expansion slots, you get two vertical expansion slots that let you show off your graphics card via a PCIe riser.

The bottom compartment of the In Win 216 holds the PSU bay (up to 22 cm in length), and two 3.5-inch drive bays that can each hold 2.5-inch drives. Two additional 2.5-inch mounts can be found behind the motherboard tray. Ventilation includes three 120 mm front intakes that can hold on to a 360 mm x 120 mm radiator; two 120 mm top exhausts that can hold a 240 mm x 120 mm radiator, and a 120 mm rear exhaust. The case measures 465 mm x 220 mm x 460 mm (HxWxD). In Win didn't reveal pricing information.

Steam, an online platform for gaming, has seen some incredible numbers in terms of usage last night. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that many people are in quarantine/self-isolation mode, the number of concurrent users of the platform has skyrocketed. Beating all the previous records of 18 million and 20 million concurrent users, Steam saw as much as 23 million concurrent users last night. Precisely 23,572,311 of users online, setting a new record-high number. The most played games were Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. For more statistics, please see here.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of high-performance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, and mobile accessories is pleased to announce that the XPG SPECTRIX D60G DDR4 memory module has been awarded a Red Dot Design Award 2020 for design excellence.

The XPG SPECTRIX D60G DDR4 memory features a unique dual RGB light strip design that gives it the largest RGB surface area of any memory module. The fully exposed RGB light strips are extra-wide for maximum effect. Combined with a mesmerizing multi-colored flow effect, it'll add amazing flair to any build. Users can customize the lighting effect such as patterns, pulse speeds, lighting intensity, and more. Control is hassle-free with the XPG RGB Sync app or an existing RGB light control software from a major motherboard maker. Beyond lighting, the D60G sports a unique avant-garde styling that includes an edgy X-light design with a diamond-inspired, multi-faceted surface.

Abkoncore today rolled out the T404B Hurricane tower type CPU air cooler under its Cool Storm sub-brand. Its design involves a conventional tower-type aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by two 120 mm fans in push-pull configuration. With this, the company is claiming a thermal capacity of up to 170 W TDP, and includes support for LGA2066, LGA115x, and AM4 sockets.

The heatsink design involves a base at which four 6 mm-thick copper heat pipes make direct contact with the CPU, conveying heat through the fin-stack, which is then ventilated by the fans. Each of the two 120 mm fans takes in 4-pin PWM for their main function, spin between 800 to 1,800 RPM, pushing a little over 50 CFM of air with maximum noise output of 33 dBA. The fans feature addressable RGB lighting, and take in 3-pin ARGB input. Measuring 128 mm x 107 mm x 157 mm (WxDxH), it weighs 1 kg. Available now, the Abkoncore Cool Storm T404B Hurricane is priced at 40€.

ASUS rolled out the ROG Strix XG27WQ, a 27-inch curved gaming monitor. With a 1500R curvature, this monitor offers WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) resolution through a VA panel. Boosting its gaming chops are 165 Hz refresh-rate, 1 ms (GTG) response time, ELMB (ASUS extreme low motion blur), and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certification. The panel meets DisplayHDR 400 specs and supports HDR-10. Other vital panel specs include 178°/178° viewing angles, 3000:1 contrast ratio, and 125% sRGB / DCI-P3 92% color saturation.

The ROG Strix XG27WQ features ASUS' typical tripod base with an ROG logo projection, with height-, swivel-, and tilt adjustments. Display inputs include a DisplayPort 1.2a and two HDMI 2.0 ports. A 3.5 mm headphones jack puts out digital audio from the graphics card. There's also a 2-port USB 3.0 hub. Among the gamer-specific features are ASUS GamePlus suite, which includes hard crosshairs, timer, FPS counter, and display alignment; ASUS GameVisual, a set of game genre-specific display presets; and low blue-light mode. ASUS didn't reveal pricing.

Reviews of AMD's flagship mobile processor, the Ryzen 9 4900HS went live today, and the verdict is clear. Intel has lost both performance and battery-efficiency leadership over its most lucrative computing segment: mobile client computing. In a Hardware Unboxed review comparing the 4900H to Intel's current Core i9 flagship, the i9-9880H, the AMD chip at its stock 45 W TDP beats the Intel one even with the Intel chip configured to 90 W cTDP.

The 4900HS posts 11.9% higher CineBench R20 score (both chips are 8-core/16-thread) when the Intel chip is bolstered with 90 W cTDP, and a whopping 33% faster when the i9-9980H is at its stock settings, and 54% faster when its capped at 35 W cTDP. It also ends up over 150% faster than AMD's last fastest mobile processor, the 12 nm "Picasso" based Ryzen 7 3750H. The story repeats with CineBench R15 (4900H being 34% faster than stock i9-9880H), 18% faster at Handbrake HEVC, 25% faster at Blender "Classroom," and 35% faster at 7-Zip benchmark. The AMD chip lags behind by 12% in the less-parallelized Photoshop. On creativity apps that do scale with cores, such as Premiere "Warp Stabilizer 4K," the 4900HS is 12.6% faster. Gaming performance remains an even split between the two chips. Find several more interesting test results and commentary in the Hardware Unboxed presentation here. Intel has already announced a response to the 4900HS in the form of the i9-10980HK.

Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing service, has seen a huge uplift in traffic/usage in the past few days amid the COVID-19 outbreak. In the places where the outbreak happened and people are enforcing social distancing, Microsoft reports that there has been a 775% traffic uplift compared to the previous situation. As everyone capable of working from home needs a communication tool, Microsoft Teams is a popular choice, and it has seen some amazing usage as well. The users of Teams service have generated over 900 million meetings and calling minutes on Teams daily in a single week, resulting in high server usage. The demand for Windows Virtual Desktops has tripled as well.

Cadence, a fabless semiconductor company focusing on the development of IP solutions and IC design and verification tools, today posted an update regarding their development efforts for the 5th generation of DDR memory which is giving us some insights into the development of a new standard. The new DDR5 standard is supposed to bring better speeds and lower voltages while being more power-efficient. In the Cadence's blog called Breakfast Bytes, one of Cadence's memory experts talked about developments of the new standards and how they are developing the IP for the upcoming SoC solutions. Even though JEDEC, a company developing memory standards, hasn't officially published DDR5 standard specifications, Cadence is working closely with them to ensure that they stay on track and be the first on the market to deliver IP for the new standard.

Marc Greenberg, a Cadence expert for memory solutions was sharing his thoughts in the blog about the DDR5 and how it is progressing. Firstly, he notes that DDR5 is going to feature 4800 MT/s speeds at first. The initial speeds will improve throughout the 12 months when the data transfer rate will increase in the same fashion we have seen with previous generation DDR standards. Mr. Greenberg also shared that the goals of DDR5 are to have larger memory dies while managing latency challenges, same speed DRAM core as DDR4 with a higher speed I/O. He also noted that the goal of the new standard is not the bandwidth, but rather capacity - there should be 24Gb of memory per die initially, while later it should go up to 32Gb. That will allow for 256 GB DIMMs, where each byte can be accessed under 100 ns, making for a very responsive system. Mr. Greenberg also added that this is the year of DDR5, as Cadence is receiving a lot of orders for their 7 nm IP which should go in production systems this year.

Today Plugable is launching its first next-generation 2.5 Gigabit networking device, the Plugable 2.5 Gbps USB Ethernet Adapter (USBC-E2500). With USB-C and USB 3.0 (USB-A) connectivity included, you can quickly and affordably upgrade nearly any modern workstation or laptop with more than double the performance of a traditional Gigabit Ethernet connection.

While most Ethernet adapters only support 1 Gigabit link rates, this USB adapter supports wired speeds up to 2.5 times faster than the 1 Gbps standard when used with Cat 5e cabling (commonly found in existing network environments), and a 2.5 Gbps-capable router or switch. With 2.5 Gbps routers still somewhat rare in home environments, users who would benefit from the increased network throughput—but don't wish to yet invest in a 2.5 Gbps router or switch—can use 2 of these adapters to create a direct peer-to-peer network between 2 systems. With this increased performance, users can take advantage of advances in high-speed networking and storage technologies, without requiring a difficult or expensive setup.

XIGMATEK late last week unveiled the Perseus open-frame ATX case. With a polygonal chamber design that creates two rear-facing panels, and a tilted motherboard tray, the Perseus features a steel frame chassis with tempered glass panels along the sides. The design creates two 120 mm fan vents along the topmost panel, 120 mm exhausts along both rear-facing panels, and two 120 mm intakes along the front panel. The main chamber with the motherboard tray has room for graphics cards up to 40 cm in length, CPU coolers up to 17 cm in height, and the PSU compartment along the bottom can hold PSUs up to 18 cm in length.

Storage compartments on the XIGMATEK Perseus include a combo plate that holds onto either one 3.5-inch drive or two 2.5-inch ones, and an additional 2.5-inch mount behind the motherboard tray. You can mount a 240 mm x 120 mm radiator along the top panel, and 120 mm x 120 mm ones along the rear- and front-facing facets of the case. Front panel connectivity includes USB 3.x type-A and HDA jacks. The case measures 610 mm x 230 mm x 540 mm (LxWxH). The company didn't reveal pricing.

The U.S. government announced advanced measures that make it harder for foreign companies, such as Taiwan's TSMC, to supply chips to Chinese telecom hardware giant Huawei. Foreign companies that use American chipmaking equipment, are required to obtain a license from the U.S. before supplying certain chips to Huawei. Sources comment that the new rule was tailor-made to curb TSMC fabricating smartphone SoCs for Huawei's HiSilicon subsidiary.

Mainland Chinese semiconductor companies are still behind Samsung and TSMC in 7 nm-class fab technologies, forcing HiSilicon to source from the latter. 7 nm fabrication is a key requirement for SoCs and modem chips capable of 5G. The high data transceiving rates of 5G requires a certain amount of compute power that can fit into smartphone-level power-envelopes only with the help of 7 nm, at least for premium smartphone form-factors. Same applies to 5G infrastructure equipment. This is hence perceived as a means for the U.S. to clamp brakes on Huawei's plans of playing a big role in 5G tech rollouts around the world, buying western 5G tech suppliers such as Nokia time to catch up. Huawei has been a flashpoint for a bitter political spat between the U.S. and China, with the Chinese press even threatening that the matter could hamper medical supplies to the U.S. to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abkoncore today unveiled the Ramesses 310, a low-depth ATX full-tower case that combines tempered glass with matte-black steel. Inside, the case positions the ATX motherboard below an upper compartment that holds the PSU and drive bays. With height compensating for depth, the case is able to hold up to three 240 mm x 120 mm radiators, one each along the bottom-, rear-, and upper side panels. The motherboard tray boasts of full-ATX support as it features 9 expansion slots, so you could install a triple-slot graphics card even in the bottom-most slot.

Storage options on the Abkoncore Ramesses 310 include three 3.5-inch drive bays in the upper compartment, and two 2.5-inch mounts behind the motherboard tray. Six Abkoncore Spider Spectrum 120 mm fans come included with the case, with an internal RGB LED controller that takes in RF remote control input. RGB embellishment also frame each of the front-panel ports: four USB 3.1 type-A, HDA jacks, and the power/reset buttons. Measuring 220 mm x 550 mm x 330 mm (WxHxD), the case weighs 9 kg. Available now, the Ramesses 310 is priced at 160€.

Apple has been working on replacing Intel CPUs in its lineup of products for a while now, and the first batch of products to feature the new Arm-based CPUs should be coming soon. Having a completely custom CPU inside it's MacBook or an iMac device will allow Apple to overtake control of the performance and security of those devices, just like they did with their iPhone models. Apple has proved that its custom-built CPUs based on Arm Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) can be very powerful and match Intel's best offerings, all while being much more efficient with a TDP of only a few Watts.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has started an "aggressive processor replacement strategy", which should give some results by the end of 2020, around Q4, or the beginning of 2021 when the first quarter arrives. According to Kuo, the approach of doing in-house design will result in not only tighter control of the system, but rather a financial benefit, as the custom processor will be 40% to 60% cheaper compared to current Intel CPU prices.

EK, the premium water cooling gear manufacturer, is launching the EK-Quantum Reflection Obsidian 1000D D5 PWM D-RGB, a reservoir, routing, and pump solution specifically engineered for Corsair Obsidian 1000D case. This distro plate is made to provide a unique water-cooling solution with dual D5 pumps for users who demand premium aesthetics, silence, and enough flow for multiple GPUs or even dual systems in one case.

This distribution plate is designed to bring the slim-lined EK Quantum aesthetics to the front of the 1000D case and to offer high flow and silent operation thanks to two serially connected genuine D5 pumps. While it is slim, it's absolutely massive in surface and weighs in at a whopping 5.3 kilograms. EK-Quantum Reflection Obsidian 1000D D5 distribution plate will only fit the Corsair Obsidian 1000D Super-Tower.

Micron Technologies, in the latest earnings report, announced that they will start shipping High-Bandwidth Memory 2 (HBM2) DRAM. Used for high-performance graphics cards, server processors and all kinds of processors, HBM2 memory is wanted and relatively expensive solution, however, when Micron enters the market of its manufacturing, prices, and the market should adjust for the new player. Previously, only SK-Hynix and Samsung were manufacturing the HBM2 DRAM, however, Micron will join them and they will again form a "big-three" pact that dominates the memory market.

Up until now, Micron used to lay all hopes on its proprietary Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) DRAM type, which didn't gain much traction from customers and it never really took off. Only a few rare products used it, as Fujitsu SPARC64 XIfx CPU used in Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX100 supercomputer introduced in 2015. Micron announced to suspend works on HMC in 2018 and decided to devote their efforts to GDDR6 and HBM development. So, as a result, we are seeing that they will launch HBM2 DRAM products sometime this year.

In no mood to cede mobile performance leadership to AMD and its Ryzen 9 4900HS processor, Intel is readying its new flagship mobile part, the Core i9-10980HK. Based on the 14 nm "Comet Lake-H" silicon, this chip packs an 8-core/16-thread CPU with a maximum boost speed (aka "Thermal Velocity Boost") of 5.30 GHz, while maintaining an aggressive power target of 45 W TDP. This should put the chip's performance somewhere between the desktop Core i7-9700K and the Core i9-9900K, both of which have TDP rated at 95 W, although the chip could perform very close to the latter at gaming, thanks to its 300 MHz higher boost frequency. Intel is expected to launch the 10th generation Core i9 H-series processors on April 2nd, around the same time when NVIDIA launches its mobile GeForce RTX 20 Super series.

LG today introduced their UltraGear 27GN750 monitor, which aims to bring high-speed, fluid gaming to a relatively low price-point. The 27GN750 is a flat monitor with a 27" diagonal, featuring an IPS panel and 1080p resolution. The gaming chops on this monitor are very much increased by the fact that it features a 240 Hz refresh rate with 1 ms response time. LG also touts VRR support in the form of G-SYNC Compatible certification (which means it employs VRR much like AMD first did through VRR instead of having to employ a dedicated module).

LG says this display is HDR compatible, but make no mistake, it's the lowest form supported (400 nits typical brightness with 320 nits as minimum according to LG), so that compatibility is... Arguable, to say the least. There's no VESA HDR 400 badge for a reason. Color reproduction is rated at 99% sRGB coverage (typical for an IPS panel). Connectivity-wise, we're looking at 1x DisplayPort, 2x HDMI, 1x USB 3.0 (upstream), 2x USB 3.0 (downstream) and 1x Headphone. LG quotes a Tilt / Height / Pivot Adjustable Stand. The LG UltraGear 27GN750 monitor is available for $399.

Zalman has now achieved global availability of their CNPS20X twin tower cooler, an air-cooling solution designed to dissipate up to 300 W of heat from your CPU of choice. The Zalman CNPS20X features loads of heat transfer technologies, including RDTH (Reverse Direct Touch Heatpipe), an evolution of the now ubiquitous DTH (Direct Touch Heatpipe) technology applied to its six heatpipes, alongside IHD (Interactive Heatpipe transfer Design) for increased thermal performance (Zalman claims this last technology brings improvements in heat dissipation in the order of 20x).

Not only the heatpipe design has been touched upon, though; the company also employed what it calls a 4D corrugated fin design, which means the fins themselves have contours (imagine a honeycomb shape and you're close) that improve heat dissipation and airflow. There's a stack of fins built out of copper, which are located close to the center of the airflow to improve heat dissipation further.

EIZO has announced its flagship monitor, called the Foris Nova, way back in October last year. However, it only was available to the Japanese consumers, and it was a limited run of only 500 units. Today, EIZO announced that it is going to expand the availability of its Foris Nova display to the global market, with more units available and coming. The Chinese market will get the first wave of units and the rest of the world is supposed to follow. Just as a reminder, the Foris Nova is a 21.6-inch 4K OLED display with very interesting characteristics such as 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and 0.4 ms response time. You can check out the full specifications here.

GameStop announced that it will permanently close down over 300 brick-and-mortar stores in an effort to "de-diversity" its business. The company closed down 331 stores last year, bringing the store strength down to 5,500 locations. Much of GameStop's focus markets are those parts of the U.S. with sub-optimal Internet bandwidth that blunts the advantage digital retailers like Steam have over it. Besides game hard-copies and coupons for cash, GameStop also retails game consoles and accessories. The earnings call that included this announcement also had a comment about a possible delay in the release of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X as supply-chains around the world are severely disrupted, not to mention people's disposable incomes.

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Beijing Memblaze Technology Co., Ltd. today announced the launch of PBlaze5 920 Series enterprise-class NVMe SSD, which can greatly enhance user experience. PBlaze5 920 Series NVMe SSD adopts 96-layer 3D eTLC NAND with a capacity up to 7.68 TB, and comes in form factors of 2.5-inch U.2 and HHHL add-in card. PBlaze5 920 Series consists of 4 groups of SKU -PBlaze5 D920, PBlaze5 C920, PBlaze5 D926 and PBlaze5 C926.

Memblaze PBlaze5 920 Series NVMe SSD offers up to 5.9 GB/s read bandwidth and 970,000 read IOPS, with read and write latency lowering to 90 μs and 12 μs respectively. With superior performance, perfect data protection, good compatibility, and user experience, as well as abundant enterprise-class features, PBlaze5 920 Series NVMe SSD enables customers to build high-speed, high-reliability, and flexible storage solutions for their mission-critical applications.

KINGMAX Semiconductor Inc., a global leading provider of memory products, is proud to announce today the launch of its M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0x4 (Gen 4 x4) SSD PX3480 solid-state drive. As SSD plays a leading role in the current era, an ultra-slim, ultra-fast M.2 specification SSD has attracted customers' attention. KINGMAX's latest Gen 4 x4 SSD PX4480 is suitable for the AMD Ryzen 3000 series processor with X570 chipset. The new SSD not only offers wide-ranging capacity choices of up to 500 GB /1 TB / 2 TB but also has read speeds up to 5000 MB/s, surpassing other SSD products available on the market. It is recommended to the video editors, graphic designers, gaming enthusiasts and anyone who are trying to process data or media contents faster.

The M.2 2280 SSD is ultra-slim. Moreover, the M.2 interface has become a must-have for new motherboards or laptops that offers users an even faster SSD experience. KINGMAX's latest M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD PX4480 adopts a PCIe Gen 4.0 high-speed interface and meets NVMe 1.3 specifications. It can deliver stunning read/write speeds. It features incredibly high R/W speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s (read) and 4,400 MB/s (write), 8 to 9 times faster than the transmission connector of the SATA III interface, and has an increase of 50% in data R/W speeds compared with the PCIe 3.0 series SSD. Users can fully experience the higher speeds of PCIe SSDs when turning on devices, loading games, and transferring or saving data.

Transcend introduced the first microSDXC memory card to feature SLC caching technology. The new USD230I memory card from Transcend features a host-transparent internal logic that treats a small portion of the 3D TLC NAND flash as SLC, to improve write performance in short bursts. This should particularly help in usecases such as high-quality burst photography or high-resolution video recording. The card is also endowed with a broad operational temperature range of -40 to 85 °C. The USD230I offers sequential transfer-rates of up to 100 MB/s, with up to 3,400 IOPS random access. It comes in capacities of 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB, offering endurance (TBW) of 36 TB for the 8 GB variant, 70 TB for the 16 GB and 32 GB variants, and 140 TB for the 64 GB variant. The company didn't reveal pricing.

NVIDIA rolled out the GeForce software 445.78 Hotfix drivers. Hotfixes are released to expeditiously correct glaring bugs with GeForce software. The 445.78 Hotfix corrects a bug that causes some DirectX 11 games to fail to launch when Image Sharpening is globally enabled from the NVIDIA Control Panel. The drivers are otherwise identical to GeForce 445.75 software released earlier this week. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 445.78 Hotfix

Intel could launch its 10th generation Core "Comet Lake-S" desktop processor family on the 30th of April (±24 hours depending on the time-zone), according to a report by El Chapuzas Informatico. The processors is built in the new LGA1200 package, and require new Intel 400-series chipset motherboards, which will launch alongside. Pricing of these processors will be along expected lines, with the Core i9 series in the $500-400 range, the Core i7 series in the $300-400 range, the Core i5 series in the $180-300 range, and Core i3 series priced below. As reported earlier, Intel is expected to increase Core i9 series core-counts to 10-core/20-thread, while doubling thread counts and L3 cache amounts across the Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 brand extensions, to 8-core/16-thread, 6-core/12-thread, and 4-core/8-thread, respectively.

EPIC Games has moved on through to the next logical step in its effort to become much more than just a game and engine developer. Today, the company has just announced that t has signed agreements to become the de facto publisher for three games companies that you're likely well familiar with. One of them is Remedy Entertainment, which gave us the excellent, experimental, mix-media storytelling Quantum Break and, more recently, the widely acclaimed Control. Alongside Remedy, the company has also signed on Gen Design, responsible for PlayStation's 4 exclusive The Last guardian, as well as PLAYDEAD, which have developed side-scrollers Limbo and Inside.

According to EPIC, they have now begun offering developers the terms they always wanted to have when they were looking for publishers, and were more focused in game creation than on their current service-providers road. EPIC will be shouldering 100% of the development costs for games these companies develop, and will offer them a 50% cut on actual profits for the game once the development costs have been recouped. More importantly for games developers, though, is the ability to maintain control of their IPs, and not having to surrender them to the publishing companies - something that EPIC is guaranteeing for any studio that signs up with them. This way, perhaps we'll be saved from some... ehm. EA-like situations, anyone?

It's not been that long since we praised the worldwide community for allowing Folding@Home to reach double the performance of the world's top supercomputer, IBM's Summit, which ekes out calculations at the petascale with 200 peak petaFLOPS. However, the world has again shown promise when it comes to people selflessly giving their power and performance for a higher cause. Folding@Home now likely smokes performance metrics of some Tier 1 civilizations out there (in the Kardashev scale, of course, should there be some; I'm cautiously jesting in all regards) with its 1.5 ExaFLOP performance.

As it stands, and should users keep on donating their processing power, it seems the community can even go as far as eclipsing the deployment of the world's most powerful supercomputer, El Capitan, which is only meant to be operational - get this - in 2023. This means we are close to offering equivalent performance for multiple disease research (including COVID-19), today, to that of a currently theoretical supercomputer. Of course, queues are long towards receiving work, so now it's become a problem for researchers to keep this computational power fed with data to crunch - we're actually hitting bottlenecks that supercomputers too have achieved before us.

OWC a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company and one of the world's most respected providers of hard drives, SSDs, Mac & PC docking solutions and performance upgrade kits, today announced the latest edition of its legendary Mercury Elite Pro external storage system for Mac, PC, Linux machines, Smart TVs, and PS4 and Xbox consoles. The 3.5-inch USB 3.2 5 Gb/s hard drive system is a modern day workhorse, delivering real-world performance up to 283 MB/s and capacities up to 16 TB to keep pace with the demands of everything from video editing projects, critical business data, and irreplaceable personal content to expanding PS4/Xbox One game storage and enjoying music/video content via a Smart TV.

The Essential External Storage Solution for Everyone
The Mercury Elite Pro kicked off OWC's rich, storied history of storage solution innovations nearly 20 years ago, and it has successfully stood the test of time by continuing to offer an incomparable blend of performance, quality, and value in a single HDD storage solution.

With the global crisis of COVID-19, we understand that these are critical times for everyone. This has impacted all aspects of our lives, and we understand that during these times, priorities are placed on more health-concerned matters. Many in the process of RMAs may find difficulty in shipping out cards for repair or service at this time, so we will be adding a 3-month extension to customers with warranties expiring between March through June 2020. PowerColor remains committed to delivery great products and services to our customers, and want to assure that we will continue to do so during these trying times.

Intel and NVIDIA are preparing to refresh their hardware offering meant for laptop devices, and they are planning to do it on April 2nd. According to the Chinese website ITHome, Intel is going to launch its 10th generation Comet Lake-H CPUs for mobile devices, on April 2nd. The new models are going to bring improved frequency and core count, with top-end models reaching up to 8 cores with 16 threads. NVIDIA, on the other hand, will also update its mobile offerings with the arrival of Turing SUPER mobile cards. So far, we only had a choice of regular Turing series, however, there is soon going to be a SUPER variant of the existing cards.

Being that these cards are also expected to arrive on April 2nd, laptop manufacturers will integrate new products and showcase their solutions on that date. The availability of these devices, based on new Intel Comet Lake-H CPUs and NVIDIA Turing SUPER GPUs, is expected to follow soon after, precisely on April 15th. Additionally, it is notable that laptop manufacturer Mechrevo will hold an online press conference where they will showcase their "Z3" gaming laptop based on new technologies.

Montech, an enthusiast Gaming PC Case, Power and Cooling solutions brand based in Taiwan introduces the new Air X ARGB Compact ATX PC Case from their best selling Air series. The Air X ARGB features a full metallic Diamond Mesh front air intake for maximum air intake, and a full 6 port ARGB fan controller! The ARGB fan controller uses 4 Pin fan connectors and 3 Pin ARGB lighting control, instead of the near obsolete Molex connectors found on other cases. Right out of the box the ARGB fan controller with two 200 mm ARGB front fans and one 120 mm ARGB fan, delivering both maximum air intake area for incredible cooling performance and the aesthetics to match. Coming in two colors - black and white, the Air X ARGB also features full glass side panel, full support for 240/280/360 mm liquid cooling making it one of the best options for its price point!

The Air X ARGB features a total of three ARGB fans that can be fully customized and controlled by ARGB compatible mainboards (5 V 3 Pin). And in the case where no ARGB compatible board is present the Air X ARGB comes with it's very own ARGB Fan Controller. Compared to other cases which normally only packs a Molex based standard fan controller, the Air X ARGB Fan Controller follows modern PC component design and features the higher-end 4 Pin Fan Connector and 3 Pin ARGB Connector. The ARGB Fan Controller is capable of controlling a total of 6 sets of ARGB Fans, or 6 (5 V 3Pin) ARGB devices and 6 4 pin case fans. All three of the included ARGB fans (2x 200 mm and 1x 120 mm) come pre-connected to the ARGB Fan Controller, easily controlled by the front panel lighting control button.

A March 23 website domain name registration update by Take-Two Interactive, publishers of the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise, sparked rumors of an imminent "Grand Theft Auto VI" announcement. The registered domain "GTAVI.com" is now a placeholder for what could be an exclusive site for the upcoming chapter in the wildly popular open-world action RPG franchise.

Much has been talked about GTA VI in recent years, such as rumors of the game having the largest open world ever in the franchise, including the ability to transport between the various fictional cities in the GTA universe via fast-travel points at airports. With GTA V, Rockstar introduced the concept of multiple playable characters, each with its unique set of missions, and some interesting joint missions where you switch between the playable characters. The introduction of cities spread across the landmass could only take this concept further.

MSI today launched three new monitors on their Optix lineup, catering to budget-conscious gamers that want fast, responsive gameplay. MSI's new Optix G241 and Optix G271 differ solely in diagonal (one is 24", the other 27"), and both offer a 1080p, IPS panel with support for refresh rates up to 144 Hz and up to 1 ms response times. Both these monitors feature support for AMD FreeSync, max 250 nits brightness, and connectivity is taken care of by 1x DisplayPort 1.2a and 2x HDMI 1.4b. The MSI Optix G241 will be available for $189.99, whilst the 27" MSI Optix G271 will go for $239.99.

More interesting for gamers that want crazy refresh rates, however, is the MSI Optix MAG251RX. This monitor keeps the 1080p resolution and IPS panel, but brings refresh rates up to a crazy 240 Hz with up to 1 ms response time. MSI has also "upgraded" the Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology up to NVIDIA's G-Sync. There's HDR 400 support (don't read that much into that though; it's the bare minimum for entry and far from a quality HDR experience). It also sports USB-C connectivity and RGB customization on the back of the monitor via MSI's Mystic Light software. The MSI Optix MAG251RX will be available for a still conscious $359.99, provided you didn't stop reading at the mention of a 1080p panel.

Microsoft yesterday announced that they would be freezing any release for optional Windows 10 updates whilst the world still reels from the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision by the company comes after they decided to keep delivering security updates for the Fall Creator's update (version 1709 of the OS).

Both these decisions by Microsoft stem from the company trying to reduce the impact of Windows 10 updates on businesses - reducing update requirements to security updates means there is fewer chances of an optional update shipping that could negatively impact productivity - of which very little bit is required right now for some businesses to even keep afloat. When the crisis has passed, all updates will be resumed.

AMD today disclosed that in December 2019, it was contacted by a person in possession of test files related to development of future graphics products, some of which were posted online and later taken down. This person has additional files that were never posted online, but the company maintains the data breach won't affect the competitiveness or security of its upcoming graphics processors. The company said that it is working closely with law enforcement as part of a criminal investigation into the incident.

The statement by AMD follows:

At AMD, data security and the protection of our intellectual property are a priority. In December 2019, we were contacted by someone who claimed to have test files related to a subset of our current and future graphics products, some of which were recently posted online, but have since been taken down. While we are aware the perpetrator has additional files that have not been made public, we believe the stolen graphics IP is not core to the competitiveness or security of our graphics products. We are not aware of the perpetrator possessing any other AMD IP. We are working closely with law enforcement officials and other experts as a part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Intel is revisiting the concept of asymmetric multi-GPU introduced with DirectX 12. The company posted an elaborate technical slide-deck it originally planned to present to game developers at the now-cancelled GDC 2020. The technology shows promise because the company isn't insulting developers' intelligence by proposing that the iGPU lying dormant be made to shoulder the game's entire rendering pipeline for a single-digit percentage performance boost. Rather, it has come up with innovating augments to the rendering path such that only certain lightweight compute aspects of the game's rendering be passed on to the iGPU's execution units, so it has a more meaningful contribution to overall performance. To that effect, Intel is on the path of coming up with SDK that can be integrated with existing game engines.

Microsoft DirectX 12 introduced the holy grail of multi-GPU technology, under its Explicit Multi-Adapter specification. This allows game engines to send rendering traffic to any combinations or makes of GPUs that support the API, to achieve a performance uplift over single GPU. This was met with lukewarm reception from AMD and NVIDIA, and far too few DirectX 12 games actually support it. Intel proposes a specialization of explicit multi-adapter approach, in which the iGPU's execution units are made to process various low-bandwidth elements both during the rendering and post-processing stages, such as Occlusion Culling, AI, game physics, etc. Intel's method leverages cross-adapter shared resources sitting in system memory (main memory), and D3D12 asynchronous compute, which creates separate processing queues for rendering and compute.

Popular video streaming sites YouTube and Netflix have reportedly started rationing their bandwidth by limiting video quality, as online traffic to their services surge to record levels. With COVID-19 lockdowns forcing people to take to online entertainment, the sites are reporting an unprecedented strain on their finite Internet bandwidth. In Europe, the two sites have capped their video quality to 480p, or slightly worse than DVD quality.

Despite the mighty backing of AWS, the world's largest CDN, Amazon's Prime Video is also finding itself having to cap quality based on regional bandwidth constraints. Google is already engaging with governments and ISPs to minimize strain on available Internet bandwidth. Streaming video remains the number one bandwidth consumer. Governments would want to prioritize bandwidth for companies operating remote- or virtual desktops for their employees working from home. Perhaps there's no better time to upgrade online video codecs to newer bandwidth-efficient ones like AV1.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has successfully shipped one million of the industry's first 10 nm-class (D1x) DDR4 (Double Date Rate 4) DRAM modules based on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology. The new EUV-based DRAM modules have completed global customer evaluations, and will open the door to more cutting-edge EUV process nodes for use in premium PC, mobile, enterprise server and datacenter applications.

"With the production of our new EUV-based DRAM, we are demonstrating our full commitment toward providing revolutionary DRAM solutions in support of our global IT customers," said Jung-bae Lee, executive vice president of DRAM Product & Technology at Samsung Electronics. "This major advancement underscores how we will continue contributing to global IT innovation through timely development of leading-edge process technologies and next-generation memory products for the premium memory market."

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced the industry's first all-in-one power management integrated circuits (PMIC), MUA01 and MUB01, optimized for today's True Wireless Stereo (TWS) devices.

Unlike wireless headphones, TWS earbuds have no wire that connects the two earpieces. Without the connecting wires, TWS devices present users with more freedom in movement and range on their day-to-day activities. However, like other mobile devices, long battery life and small form factors are key requirements for these wireless earbuds.

TEAMGROUP today announces that T-FORCE VULCAN Z and DARK Z gaming memory will be the first to release the large capacity, 32 GB single stick memory. There are DDR4 2666 and DDR4 3000 two different frequency of memory modules available to offer desktop PC a complete selection of expansions. It can provide the powerful computer equipment with high storage speed and multitasking capabilities that creators need for video content creation and editing. It can also perfectly support all AMD and Intel's consumer platforms.

The invincible T-FORCE gaming series is your top choice in 2020 when it comes to large capacity upgrades. T-FORCE VULCAN Z and DARK Z, which are praised by the media around the world, will be the first to release the large capacity, 32 GB single stick memory. VULCAN Z launches DDR4-2666 MHz and DDR4-3000 MHz, two different frequencies of single channel kit and dual channel kit (32 GB X2). And DARK Z will mainly provide a DDR4-3000 MHz dual channel kit (32 GB X2). Consumers can choose a suitable specification based on their personal usage. Not only can process large files easily, but it can also upgrade capacity and handle multiple data computing at the same time. This can increase the applications of desktop computers.

Bitspower unveiled the Summit ELX line of CPU water blocks optimized for 3rd generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors. The block's coolant channel is designed keeping in mind the layout of the "Castle Peak" MCM, such that coolant flows over even the CCDs farthest away from the center, which has the I/O controller die. This design should particularly benefit users of the Threadripper 3990X, which has eight CCDs. The block supports both sTRX4 and older TR4 sockets.

The primary material is nickel-plated copper, with a mirror finish at the base. There are three variants based on the type of top. The first one called "DRGB," (BP-CPUELXTRX40-DRGB), features a clear acrylic top with embedded addressable-RGB LEDs that plug into a standard 3-pin ARGB header. The second variant is called "Metal" (BP-CPUELXTRX40-MT), and features a metal alloy top with a chrome finish. The third variant, called "POM," (BP-CPUELXTRX40-POM), features a matte-black POM acetal top. The Summit ELX supports standard G 1/4" fittings, and measures 115 mm x 75 mm x 18 mm (LxWxH). The DRGB variant is priced at NTD 2,800, the Metal variant NTD 3,255, and the POM variant NTD 2,635.

Greenliant has started volume production of its industrial temperature (-40°C to +85°C) 2 Terabyte NVMe and SATA M.2 ArmourDrive solid state drive (SSD) modules. Built in the 2280 form factor, and offered with hardware encryption and on-board DRAM, these high-performance SSDs save space, improve security and increase capacity for a wide variety of applications, including video conferencing, in-flight entertainment and data logging.

"Customers rely on our wide and deep selection of quality solid state storage products, and Greenliant is pleased to be one of the first companies to offer I-temp 2 Terabyte M.2 SSDs for industrial applications that require higher capacities," said Arthur Kroyan, vice president of business development and marketing, Greenliant. "With on-board DRAM and advanced security features, these products deliver consistent sustained performance and strong user data protection, which can be important advantages for certain embedded systems."

For the second time in history, Computex, one of the flagship electronics shows in the industry, and our favorite event, has been postponed. Many years ago, it was delayed in 2003 due to the SARS outbreak, however, it happened again today. Following the outbreak of COVID-19. Instead of cancelling, the Computex organizer TAITRA has decided to postpone their 2020 event. Originally scheduled for June, Computex has been moved to September 28th, when the event will officially start. It will last only three days instead of the usual five, ending on the 30th.

This is especially relevant given that the event now shares the same three days with Innovex, the partnering startup-focused show that happens on the last 2-3 days of Computex each year, so the two shows have to share the spotlight on the same time. Making things tighter is confirmation from TAITRA that Computex, and Innovex, will both be sharing Hall 2 of the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, as opposed to having both Hall 1 and 2 available for Computex. This shortened timeframe and smaller booth space is a heavy indication that the agency expects a smaller turnaround at this time, and indeed several companies are already expressing concerns about whether Computex 2020 should have just been cancelled altogether. Some companies have told us they still plan to have an online event in June given they have planned product lifecycles around it already, and the new event in September is just a hiccup they are not confident about handling. We hope to bring you the latest Computex news live from the trade show, once it happens, so stay tuned.

Three new 10th generation Core "Ice Lake-U" notebook processors surfaced on Intel website with a curious new nomenclature, possibly ahead of their "Q2-2020" launch. The three follow the processor model numbering convention of 10x0NGy, where x denotes the key model differentiator, and y the iGPU tier differentiator. Among the three parts are the Core i7-1060NG7, the Core i5-1030NG7, and the Core i3-1000NG4. The i5-1060NG7 and i5-1030NG7 are 10-Watt parts and feature 4-core/8-thread "Sunny Cove" CPUs, while the i3-1000NG4 packs a 2-core/4-thread "Sunny Cove" CPU, and is rated at 9 W TDP.

What sets the Core i5 apart from the Core i7, besides CPU clock speeds, are L3 cache sizes: 8 MB for the Core i7, and 6 MB for the i5. The Core i3 packs 4 MB. With an eye clearly on ultra-portable notebooks, these chips only feature dual-channel LPDDR4 memory interfaces, with memory clock speeds of up to 3733 MT/s. The i7-1060NG7 CPU ticks at 1.20 GHz and up to 3.80 GHz Turbo Boost; while the i5-1030NG7 runs between 1.10 GHz to 3.50 GHz. The i3-1000NG4 is clocked 1.10 GHz with 3.20 GHz Turbo Boost. The Core i7 and Core i5 parts pack an identical Gen11 iGPU: Iris Plus clocked between 300 MHz to 1.10 GHz for the i7 and up to 1.05 GHz for the i5. The Core i3 features 300-900 MHz iGPU clock speeds and fewer execution units.

BenQ today announced the latest addition to its monitor family design for professional use. The SW321C, as it is called, is a 32-inch monitor with an IPS panel of 4K (3840×2160p) resolution. The panel itself is a 60 Hz screen with 250 nits of brightness, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 5 ms GtG response time, and it offers 178-degree viewing angles, which is standard for IPS panels. When it comes to the color coverage and the ability to accurately represent them, the SW321C features 95% of the DCI-P3, 99% of the Adobe RGB, and 100% of the sRGB color gamut. It has a 16-bit 3D look-up table (LUT) and features calibration for DeltaE ≤ 2.

The monitor comes with HDR10 specification, however, due to the brightness of 250 nits, it is not capable of performing any serious HDR content editing. Another interesting note is that this monitor supports Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) standard, which is an uncommon one. For input, the monitor had support for one DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.0, and one USB-C port. There is a dual-port USB hub, which has an SD card reader right next to it, making this very useful feature for photographers. Exact pricing and availability of this monitor are unknown, however, it is supposed to hit the market soon.

GSC Game World announced the second chapter and latest entry to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The survival horror FPS made its debut in 2007 at a time when PC graphics were taking a technological leap. The Kiev-based game studio since dished out the "Clear Sky" prequel and "Call of Pripyat" sequel last decade, but has since been a recluse to the AAA gaming scene. The development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 appears to be already underway. The game will leverage Unreal Engine, and there's a fairly high possibility of it being Epic Games Store exclusive given its sweet revenue-sharing model that directs 88% of the sales to the game publisher.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 developers (or at least a Twitter handle claiming to represent them), posted two key tweets. One shows a teaser screenshot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in development; and another with a message from the developers to fans of the game franchise. "The second chapter of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. saga will be our most ambitious game so far. It will live to the legendary legacy," the statement reads. The developers didn't, however, state any timelines. "Consider it (the teaser screenshot and announcement) our humble present, with more to come in 2020," the statement concludes.

DeepCool today rolled out the MATREXX 55 PWM 2F, a variant of the original MATREXX 55 from 2018, but a sibling of the more recent MATREXX 55 Mesh 4F from earlier this year, which replaces the tempered glass front panel with an airy steel mesh that lets the front intake fans breathe better. What sets this case apart from the Mesh 4F is the set of pre-installed fans. While the 4F includes four DC fans (three pre-installed along the front intake and one at the rear exhaust), the new MATREXX 55 PWM 2F includes just two fans, one at the front and the other out back. It's just that these included fans are of a higher quality, with 4-pin PWM input, and possibly a higher service life bearing.

The case is otherwise identical to the Mesh 4F, with its horizontally partitioned interior with room for motherboards up to E-ATX length, graphics cards that are up to 37 cm long, and CPU coolers up to 16.8 cm in height. Storage areas include two 3.5-inch drive bays that can each hold 2.5-inch drives, and two additional 2.5-inch mounts. Among the fan mounts are three 140/120 mm front, two 140/120 mm top, and a 120 mm rear exhaust. The case measures 440 mm x 210 mm x 480 mm (HxWxD), weighing 6.6 kg. The company didn't reveal pricing, but it could be identical to the Mesh 4F, at around $80.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products, is proud of its competitive and affordable network-attached storage that offers the best-in-class pricing as well as feature set with the F2-210.The TerraMaster F2-210 NAS allows easy, centralization of your multimedia files so you can enjoy them throughout your network or through the cloud, so users don't need to worry about sharing your files in multiple devices. The F2-210 simplifies and streamlines the storage, setup and consumption of your multimedia content whether it be home movies, family photos or your music library, the F2-210 puts them all in one place to make things more accessible.

The F2-210 supports both Emby and Plex media servers to centralize all your multimedia content. Whether it be videos, music or photos, whichever your media server or choice is, you can use the power of either Emby or Plex to catalog and streamline your content library all in one place. Go from powerful data storage to a powerful, feature-rich entertainment center, Emby and Plex both offer exceptional and easy to use interfaces as well as robust organization tools so you can access and organize your data all in one central app.

This one here is another shot in the arm when it comes to faith in humanity. Folding@Home, the distributed computing project where users can donate their spare CPU and GPU cycles for a given cause, has hit an absolute bonkers milestone. According to Greg Bowman, Director of Folding@home, the network has reached a peak compute power amounting to some 470 petaFLOPS - more than double that of the world's current supercomputing record holder, the Summit supercomputer, which dishes out 200 peak petaFLOPS. Folding@Home's 470 Petaflops means users donating their spare cycles are delivering more computing power than that which is available in the world's top 7 supercomputers combined.

After some slight service outages where users weren't getting any work units due to the increased number of donors over the last few days, the computing service now seems to be running at full steam ahead. Remember that you can select the causes for which you are donating your computing power: whether cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington, or Parkinson's disease, as well as some other non-selectable projects.

EK, the premium water cooling gear manufacturer is launching the EK-Quantum Reflection Evolv X D5 PWM D-RGB - a custom-designed water cooling reservoir, routing, and pump solution made to fit two Phanteks cases - the Phanteks Evolv X and Phanteks P600S. This distro plate is specifically designed to provide advanced water cooling with a market-leading D5 pump for users who demand premium aesthetics, silence, and powerful flow.

EK-Quantum Reflection Evolv X D5 PWM D-RGB offers an all-in-one solution that includes a D5 pump, reservoir, simple mounting mechanism, and multiple industry standard G1/4" threaded inlet and outlets. The placement of these inlets and outlets is aligned to match other EK cooling components and to minimize the number of bends the user has to make when creating the loop. The distro plate can support up to one CPU water block, four GPU blocks, and a top-mounted radiator.

Valve's Half Life: Alyx has been finally released, after the company first teased, and then unwrapped the game back in November 2019. Half Life: Alyx has been completely developed for the VR gaming crown, with a focus on execution that meant for it to finally be VR's killer app - much like Halo was for the original Xbox. Valve describes the game as a full-length release in the Half Life universe, slotting in the 20-year time gap between the events of the original Half Life and Half Life 2.

Of course, to play this game, you need a PC-based VR headset to play the game through Steam. The game has received rave reviews already, featuring a 93 Metacritic score based on 24 critic reviews, and an 8.2 user score. Give it some time before actually looking for guidance in that user review score, though. Valve founder Gabe Newell had this to say: "Half-Life: Alyx represents the culmination of Valve's technological advancement over the past few years. We have built SteamVR, our game engine, our tools, and VR hardware specifically to enable us to ship the best content we know how to create. Today, as we ship Alyx remotely from our homes, we are hoping that everyone stays safe and has a great time playing the game. Please let us know what you think."

NVIDIA today announced its new Deep Learning Supersampling 2.0 (DLSS 2.0) performance enhancement feature, being distributed through the new GeForce 445.75 Game Ready drivers. DLSS 2.0 is NVIDIA's second attempt at a holy grail of performance boost at acceptable levels of quality loss (think what MP3 did to WAV). It works by rendering the 3D scene at a lower resolution than what your display is capable of, and upscaling it with deep-learning reconstructing details using a pre-trained neural network. Perhaps the two biggest differences between DLSS 2.0 and the original DLSS that made its debut with GeForce RTX 20-series in 2018, is the lack of a need for game-specific content for training the DLSS neural net; and implementation of a rendering technique called temporal feedback.

As mentioned earlier, DLSS 2.0 offers image quality comparable to original resolution while only rendering 1/4 or1/2 the pixels. It then uses new temporal feedback techniques to reconstruct details in the image. DLSS 2.0 is also able to use tensor cores on GeForce RTX GPUs "more efficiently," to execute "2x faster" than the original DLSS. Lastly, DLSS 2.0 gives users greater control over the image quality, which affects the rendering resolution of your game: quality, balanced (1:2), and performance (1:4), where the ratio denotes rendering-resolution to display resolution. Resolution scaling is a sure-shot way to gain performance, but at noticeable quality loss. DLSS uses AI to restore some of the details. The difference between performance gained from resolution scaling and AI-based image quality enhancement is the net DLSS performance uplift. In addition to DLSS 2.0, GeForce 445.75 drivers come game-ready for "Half Life: Alyx."

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 445.75 Game Ready Drivers with DLSS 2.0

Intel has been experimenting with a concept of mixing various types of cores in a single package with a design called Lakefield. With this processor, you would get a package of relatively small dimensions that are 12-by-12-by-1 millimeters withing very low TDP. Thanks to the Twitter user InstLatX64 (@InstLatX64) we have some GeekBench 5 results of the new Lakefield chip. The CPU in question is the Core i5-L15G7, a 5 core CPU without HyperThreading. The 5C/5T would be a weird configuration if only Lakefield wasn't meant for such configs. There are one "big" Sunny Cove core and four "small" Tremont cores built on the 10 nm manufacturing process. This is the so-called compute die, where only the CPU cores are present. The base dies containing other stuff like I/O controllers and PHYs, memory etc. is made on a low-cost node like 22 nm, where performance isn't the primary target. The whole chip is targeting the 5-7 W TDP range.

In the GeekBench 5 result we got, the Core i5-L15G7 is a processor that has a base frequency of 1.4 GHz, while in the test it reached as high as 2.95 GHz speeds. This is presumably for the big Sunny Cove cores, as Tremont cores are supposed to be slower. The cache configuration reportedly puts 1.5 MB of L2$ and 4 MB of L3$ for the CPUs. If we take a look at performance numbers, the chip scores 725 points in single-core tests, while the multi-core result is 1566 points. We don't know what is the targeted market and what it competes with, however, if compared to some offerings from Snapdragon, like the Snapdragon 835, it offers double the single-threaded performance with a similar multi-core score. If this is meant to compete with the more powerful Snapdragon offerings like the 8cx model, comparing the two results in Intel's fail. While the two have similar single-core performance, the Snapdragon 8cx leads by as much as 76.9% in a multi-core scenario, giving this chip a heavy blow.

A WikiChip analysis of TSMC's next-generation 5 nanometer N5P silicon fabrication node estimates a massive 84-87% increase in transistor densities on offer compared to the company's first commercial 7 nm-class node, the N7 (7 nm DUV). The report estimates an 87% transistor-density increase, even though TSMC's own figure is slightly modest, at 84%. TSMC N5P node is expected to commence production later this year. Its precursor, TSMC N5, began risk production earlier this year, with production on the node commencing in April or May, unless derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The N5P node provides transistor densities of an estimated 171.3 million transistors per mm² die area, compared to 91.2 mTr/mm² of N7. Apple is expected to be the node's biggest customer in 2020, with the company building its A14-series SoC on it.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, the Smart Power Management 2.0. To improve our user's experience, Thermaltake has redesigned the entire interface allowing users to track and record their power usages. SPM platform helps monitor the digital power supply unit's lifespan and prevents data loss due to malfunctions being undetected. The brand-new dashboard contains overall power supply data for users to obtain information in one glance. Independent Power Supply Unit analysis page allows users to select individual power supply to access detailed information.

Users can add, remove, or rename the power linked to the platform on the Power Management page. To pick up abnormal events effortlessly, users can go to the Cloud notification page to analyze power supply activity notes. Moreover, to promote the eco-friendly concept to our product, Thermaltake's ECO Achievement page helps raise the users' awareness of how much carbon dioxide they produce while using the power supply. By utilizing Thermaltake's Smart Power Management 2.0, users can easily monitor and control their digital power supply.

Intel's upcoming Rocket Lake-S desktop platform is expected to arrive sometime later this year, however, we didn't have any concrete details on what will it bring. Thanks to the exclusive information obtained by VideoCardz'es sources at Intel, there are some more details regarding the RKL-S platform. To start, the RKL-S platform is based on a 500-series chipset. This is an iteration of the upcoming 400-series chipset, and it features many platform improvements. The 500-series chipset based motherboards will supposedly have an LGA 1200 socket, which is an improvement in pin count compared to LGA 1151 socket found on 300 series chipset.

The main improvement is the CPU core itself, which is supposedly a 14 nm adaptation of Tiger Lake-U based on Willow Cove core. This design is representing a backport of IP to an older manufacturing node, which results in bigger die space due to larger node used. When it comes to the platform improvements, it will support the long-awaited PCIe 4.0 connection already present on competing platforms from AMD. It will enable much faster SSD speeds as there are already PCIe 4.0 NVMe devices that run at 7 GB/s speeds. With RKL-S, there will be 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes present, where four would go to the NVMe SSD and 16 would go to the PCIe slots from GPUs. Another interesting feature of the RKL-S is the addition of Xe graphics found on the CPU die, meant as iGPU. Supposedly based on Gen12 graphics, it will bring support for HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.4a connectors.

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2020's Game Developers Conference (GDC), originally set to be live from March 16th through March 20th, was one of the first tech shows to be cancelled in wake of the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak. Now, the organization has announced that the event has been rescheduled a full 5 months later for August 2020. The event has been set for a three-day "GDC Summer" still taking place in Moscone Center in San Francisco, USA, starting August 4th and ending August 6th. Passes for the exhibition are already available, with early takers being offered heavy discounts over the on-floor passes.

GDC has been the stage for a number of high-profile gaming and services announcements, with the 2019 edition seeing announcements for Google's Stadia, EPIC Games detailing new features for its Unreal engine, and AMD taking the lid of their (then) upcoming 3rd generation Ryzen CPUs. Intel was first expected to detail their Xe graphics architecture at GDC 2020. It remains to be seen whether the blue giant will still be doing so in wake of this delay, or if the company will find an in-house (albeit likely online) alternative to get word of mouth flowing on their upcoming high performance graphics architecture.

It's been a while since we've had a post on a Goodram product at TechPowerUp, with the company's releases mainly falling off the radar. However, the company's new PX500 series of NVMe SSDs are being positioned as value options in the segment, whilst being quoted with some respectable transfer speeds - provided you don't acquire the lowest capacity version. Available in 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB capacities, the Goodram PX500 are DRAM-less SSDs driven by Silicon Motion's SMI 2263XT controller.

Quoted numbers for the 256 GB version stand at 1,850 MB/s sequential read, 950 MB/s sequential write, 102,000 IOPS 4K random read and 230,000 IOPS 4K random write. The 512 GB version posts 2,000 MB/s, 1,600 MB/s, 173,000 IOPS and 140,000 IOPS in the same performance metrics, while the 1 TB version maxes out at 2,050 MB/s, 1650 MB/s, 240,000 IOPS and 280,000 IOPS, respectively. The Goodram PX500 series of NVMe SSDs are backed by a three-year warranty, and prices have not yet been announced.

The current quarantine situation can be cut in two ways: as a major setback for your life, or as an opportunity. An opportunity, for instance, to mow down all the games you've got on backburner. To that end, and in case you're running low in Triple-AAA or quirky, interesting game experiments, the EPIC Games Store has now made available for free download both Ubisoft's Watch Dogs and Galactic Cafe's The Stanley Parable. Both offer a distinct gameplay experience, with EPIC thus catering to two completely different gamer demographics.

Watch Dogs is a well-known action-adventure RPG launched back in 2014, set in a fictionalized version of Chicago. Playing as Aiden Pierce, a hacker with a personal revenge motivation, you hack your way through security systems in a somewhat dystopian society. The game was not very well received, standing with a 77 score on Metacritic and a 4.9 user score (in no small part due to the considerable graphics downgrade seen between the showcased version and the final graphics the game shipped with). The Stanley parable, on the other hand, is a quirky first-person exploration game based on a mod to the Half Life 2 engine that seems set on exploring a quantum approach to storytelling. This one features a much healthier 88 score in Metacritic and an 8.0 in user score.

AMD today announced in the form of a blog post that its upcoming graphics cards based on RDNA 2 architecture will feature support for Microsoft's latest DirectX 12 Ultimate API. "With this architecture powering both the next generation of AMD Radeon graphics cards and the forthcoming Xbox Series X gaming console, we've been working very closely with Microsoft to help move gaming graphics to a new level of photorealism and smoothness thanks to the four key DirectX 12 Ultimate graphics features -- DirectX Raytracing (DXR), Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback." - said AMD in the blog.

Reportedly, Microsoft and AMD have worked closely to enable this feature set and provide the best possible support for RDNA 2 based hardware, meaning that future GPUs and consoles are getting the best possible integration of the new API standard.

Microsoft Thursday released the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo. This is not a new API with any new features, but rather a differentiator for graphics cards and game consoles that support four key modern features of DirectX 12. This helps consumers recognize the newer and upcoming GPUs, and tell them apart from some older DirectX 12 capable GPUs that were released in the mid-2010s. For a GPU to be eligible for the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo, it must feature hardware acceleration for ray-tracing with the DXR API; must support Mesh Shaders, Variable Rate Shading (VRS), and Sampler Feedback (all of the four). The upcoming Xbox Series X console features this logo by default. Microsoft made it absolutely clear that the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo isn't meant as a compatibility barrier, and that these games will work on older hardware, too.

As it stands, the "Navi"-based Radeon RX 5000 series are "obsolete", just like some Turing cards from the GeForce GTX 16-series. At this time, the only shipping product which features the logo is NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 20-series and the TITAN RTX, as they support all the above features.

NVIDIA graphics cards, starting from the current generation GeForce RTX "Turing" lineup, will support the upcoming DirectX 12 Ultimate API. Thanks to a slide obtained by our friends over at VideoCardz, we have some information about the upcoming iteration of the DirectX 12 API made by Microsoft. In the new API revision, called "DirectX 12 Ultimate", it looks like there are some enhancements made to the standard DirectX 12 API. From the leaked slide we can see the improvements coming in the form of a few additions.

The GeForce RTX lineup will support the updated version of API with features such as ray tracing, variable-rate shading, mesh shader, and sampler feedback. While we do not know why Microsoft decided to call this the "Ultimate" version, it is possibly used to convey clearer information about which features are supported by the hardware. In the leaked slide there is a mention of consoles as well, so it is coming to that platform as well.

AMD released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition drivers just in time for Asia and ANZ regions to begin "razing hell" with DOOM Eternal. Version 20.3.1 adds day-one optimization for DOOM Eternal, including an up to 5 percent performance improvement with "Ultra Nightmare" graphics settings. Optimization is also added for "Half Life: Alyx" and the Vulkan API mode of "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint." The drivers also add a few Vulkan extensions: VK_EXT_post_depth_coverage (only supported on RDNA or later graphics architectures); VK_KHR_shader_non_semantic_info, VK_EXT_texel_buffer_alignment, and VK_EXT_pipeline_creation_cache_control. Grab the drivers from the link below and raze hell!

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.3.1 BetaThe change log follows.

NVIDIA today posted GeForce 442.74 WHQL Game Ready drivers. These come with optimization and bug fixes for the weekend's biggest release, "DOOM Eternal," which goes live in Asia and ANZ in a few minutes from now. Besides this, the 442.74 WHQL drivers address just one bug: an issue with "Red Dead Redemption 2," where task-switching with alt+Tab in the middle of the game may result in a black screen. Grab the drivers from the link below and start slaying!

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 442.74 WHQLThe change-log follows.

Today, Intel announced the readiness of Pohoiki Springs, its latest and most powerful neuromorphic research system providing the computational capacity of 100 million neurons. The cloud-based system will be made available to members of the Intel Neuromorphic Research Community (INRC), extending their neuromorphic work to solve larger, more complex problems.

"Pohoiki Springs scales up our Loihi neuromorphic research chip by more than 750 times, while operating at a power level of under 500 watts. The system enables our research partners to explore ways to accelerate workloads that run slowly today on conventional architectures, including high-performance computing (HPC) systems." -Mike Davies, director of Intel's Neuromorphic Computing Lab.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces the A68N-2100K SoC motherboard that comes with an in-built AMD E1-6010 Processor. Throughout many decades, BIOSTAR has been revered as one of the best manufacturers of robust, highly reliable motherboards with a wide array of models on both Intel and AMD platforms to choose from and a plethora of supplementary components catering to many user preferences globally.

Modern technology meets sleek, refined form factor as BIOSTAR's A68N-2100K SoC Mini-ITX motherboard is unveiled to the world with an inbuilt AMD E1-6010 Processor and support for AMD Radeon R2 Graphics.

AMD earlier this week trimmed prices of its retail 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processors in the US, through promotions exclusive to Newegg and Amazon. The company is also including 3-month Xbox Game Pass subscriptions with select models. The discounts see the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 3900X go for $449, $50 lower than its MSRP of $499. The company's fastest 8-core/16-thread part, the Ryzen 7 3800X, is now going for $359, or $40 lower than its $399 MSRP. The popular Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core/16-thread chip is selling for $304, a $25 discount from its $329 MSRP. AMD is applying similar $25 cuts to its 6-core/12-thread parts, with the Ryzen 5 3600X going for $224 compared to its $249 MSRP, and the popular Ryzen 5 3600 priced at $174 compared to its $199 MSRP.

The world's leading memory brand, TEAMGROUP today announces that the T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB Full Mirror Gaming Memory has won the Red Dot Design Award 2020. The XTREEM ARGB has earned an enthusiastic response from gamers around the globe ever since its release. It stands out among 6,500 entries worldwide and overwhelmingly praised by international experts. TEAMGROUP's strength and creativity in product research and development make the T-FORCE gaming brand shine at international design awards once again.

The German Red Dot Design Award, one of the world's four major design awards, has an extraordinary influence in the industry and is also an important indicator for designers. It was founded by the famous German design association, Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in 1955. Global professional jury judge entries based on creativity, solutions, product communication design and concept. The award has attracted over six thousand entries from more than 60 countries. And T-FORE XTREEM ARGB Full Mirror Gaming Memory has won the award with product uniqueness and rich creativity, and shines in the design field.

EK, a premium water cooling gear manufacturer, in partnership with the prestigious Swedish case manufacturer Fractal Design, is launching the EK-Quantum Reflection Fractal ATX D5 PWM D-RGB - a custom-designed water cooling reservoir, routing and pump solution made to fit several Fractal Design ATX-size cases. This distro plate is specifically designed to provide an advanced water cooling solution with a market-leading D5 pump for users who are building custom loop liquid cooling in Fractal Design cases.

It is designed to simplify the process for beginner PC builders who are entering the hard tubing custom loop liquid cooling world, as well as to bring the slim-lined EK Quantum aesthetics to an already elegant case.

CHIEFTEC, a world-wide renowned brand for reliable PC chassis and power supplies, today announces two remarkable models to their gaming-chassis line. The Scorpion 3 (GL-03B-OP) furthers the legacy of the highly-successful gaming Scorpion-series by adding 4x pre-installed +5V A-RGB Rainbow fans and slide-to-open side door features. Along with Scorpion 3, CHIEFTEC also announces the revised HAWK (AL-02B-TG-OP), upgraded with tempered glass side panel as special edition.

Scorpion 3 (GL-03B-OP, ATX), the new iteration of the Scorpion-series upgrades with 4x preinstalled A-RGB Rainbow fans from our Tornado fan set. Each fan is furnished with shock-absorbing and anti-vibration rubbers and special fan blades design, which guarantee a whisper-quiet operation. Thanks for the certified control box (DF-908) and an RF remote control, the color modes and fan speed can be easily controlled via the buttons on the control box or the remote control. Fur more personalized illumination experience, all conventional 3 PIN +5V A-RGB motherboard technologies such as ASUS AURA, ASRock RGB Sync, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and Gigabyte RGB FUSION are supported.

Taking aim at Creators, Gamers and other DIY-ers, Fractal Design today launched an innovative, small form factor chassis through close collaboration with Intel. "We were very excited about partnering with Intel in developing this case," says Fractal Design founder Hannes Wallin. "It inspired us to take on a project that challenges the convention that elegant design can't be combined with flexible functionality, and we're very happy with the result."

Available today, the Era ITX is the next generation of Mini-ITX case design. This compact chassis is free from the configuration limitations traditionally associated with small form factor systems. This unique product brings the perfect combination of elegant design and technical engineering to PC hardware innovation. Era's design presents a surfaced, aluminium exterior that is paired with top inserts ranging from wood to tempered glass. This combination of materials along with a variety of colorways presents a spectrum of choices to the user.

We've just posted our Fractal Design Era case review.

Sony in a YouTube stream keynote by PlayStation 5 lead system architect Mark Cerny, detailed the upcoming entertainment system's hardware. There are three key areas where the company has invested heavily in driving forward the platform by "balancing revolutionary and evolutionary" technologies. A key design focus with PlayStation 5 is storage. Cerny elaborated on how past generations of the PlayStation guided game developers' art direction as the low bandwidths and latencies of optical discs and HDDs posed crippling latencies arising out of mechanical seeks, resulting in infinitesimally lower data transfer rates than what the media is capable of in best case scenario (seeking a block of data from its outermost sectors). SSD was the #1 most requested hardware feature by game developers during the development of PS5, and Sony responded with something special.

Each PlayStation 5 ships with a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 SSD with a flash controller that has been designed in-house by Sony. The controller features 12 flash channels, and is capable of at least 5.5 GB/s transfer speeds. When you factor in the exponential gains in access time, Sony expects the SSD to provide a 100x boost in effective storage sub-system performance, resulting in practically no load times.

Apple today announced its most advanced iPad Pro. Now with the A12Z Bionic chip, iPad Pro is faster and more powerful than most Windows PC laptops. The new iPad Pro adds an Ultra Wide camera, studio-quality mics and a breakthrough LiDAR Scanner that delivers cutting-edge depth-sensing capabilities, opening up more pro workflows and supporting pro photo and video apps. The LiDAR Scanner, along with pro cameras, motion sensors, pro performance, pro audio, the stunning Liquid Retina display and powerful apps, extends the lead of iPad Pro as the world's best device for augmented reality (AR). The new iPad Pro is available to order starting today on apple.com.

With iPadOS 13.4, Apple brings trackpad support to iPad, giving customers an all-new way to interact with their iPad. Rather than copying the experience from macOS, trackpad support has been completely reimagined for iPad. As users move their finger across the trackpad, the pointer elegantly transforms to highlight user interface elements. Multi-Touch gestures on the trackpad make it fast and easy to navigate the entire system without users ever lifting their hand.

DE-CIX, the operator of the world's largest Internet Exchange in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is taking stock for the first time since the tightening of public measures in the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 virus. DE-CIX has noted a strong change in data traffic and also in Internet user behavior. The average data traffic at the world's largest Internet Exchange in Frankfurt has increased by 10% since last Wednesday. Compared to the previous few weeks, there has also been a significant increase in video conferencing traffic - such as Skype, Teams, and WebEx - of about 50%, and a rising number of VPN users has also been registered. In addition, since Friday last week there has also been an increase of about 25% in online and cloud gaming, and there has also been a significant increase in traffic from the use of social media platforms. Similar results are expected for the other DE-CIX locations.

"Capacities in our own network are regularly expanded on a long-term basis. We always plan for about twelve months in advance. We continue expanding as soon as 63% of the existing capacities are reached. The remaining 37% free capacity is needed to create redundancy and to ensure that we always have enough free capacity for traffic growth. In addition to our network for the Internet Exchange, customers also need to expand capacity in their own network. These expansions are carried out by the customers themselves, according to their own processes and procedures," comments Dr Thomas King, CTO at DE-CIX, on the increasing data traffic.

Apple today updated MacBook Air, the world's most loved notebook, with faster performance, the new Magic Keyboard, twice the storage and a new lower price of $999, and $899 for education. The new MacBook Air delivers up to two times faster CPU performance and up to 80 percent faster graphics performance, letting customers breeze through daily activities and play more games. Now starting with 256 GB of storage, MacBook Air allows customers to store even more movies, photos and files. With its brilliant 13-inch Retina display for vivid images and sharp text, Touch ID for easy login and secure online purchases, spacious trackpad, and all-day battery life combined with the power of macOS Catalina, it's the best MacBook Air ever made.

"From students and consumers buying their first computer to customers looking to upgrade, everyone loves the Mac, and they especially love MacBook Air. Today we're giving it a huge update, with two times faster performance, the new Magic Keyboard, double the storage, a new lower price of $999 and an even lower price of $899 for education," said Tom Boger, Apple's senior director of Mac and iPad Product Marketing. "With its stunning, thin and light design, brilliant Retina display, all-day battery life and the power and ease-of-use of macOS, MacBook Air is the world's best consumer notebook."

The Taiwan (ROC) Government announced a ban on the entry of all foreign visitors into the country until further notice. The ban takes effect from Thursday, March 19, in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic that has claimed thousands of lives worldwide. All foreign arrivals already on their way will be placed in a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Exceptions to the ban include ARC (alien resident certificate) holders, diplomatic passport holders, and businesspersons with special entry permits issued by the government (these are not the same as business visas), although even these persons must subject themselves to the quarantine. The ban is expected to force most commercial airlines to reduce or suspend their services to the country. The travel ban to Taiwan puts Computex 2020 in jeopardy. Although held in June, preparations for the show typically begin as early as April, with foreign exhibitors preparing to import their exhibits, organizing their booths, arranging logistics, etc.

EIZO Corporation (TSE: 6737) today announced the release of the ColorEdge CS2740, a 27-inch, 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) monitor for creative work, complete with USB Type-C connectivity. Whether it be photography, video editing, or design, this monitor provides everything to keep imagination flowing.

The ColorEdge CS series is a range of monitors that include many of the advanced features of EIZO's professional ColorEdge CG series, while also meeting the varying needs and budgets of hobbyists and prosumers. The ColorEdge CS2740 is the first in the CS series to implement 4K UHD resolution, which is four times the size of Full HD (1920 x 1080). The remarkable detail ensures that high resolution content is displayed crisply. The monitor also boasts a pixel density of 164 ppi for 4K image display that has never looked smoother. Alphanumeric characters and contours are distinguished with excellent sharpness, so users can check even the finest details without needing to zoom in.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in data solutions, today announced the latest in high-performance solutions for multi-user NAS environments, adding to their award-winning IronWolf SSD product line. Seagate's IronWolf 510 is an M.2 NVMe SSD with caching speeds of up to 3 GB/s for NVMe-compatible systems and is ideal for creative pros and business NAS needing 24x7 multi-user storage that is cache enabled.

The IronWolf 510 SSD meets leading top NAS manufacturer requirements of one drive write per day (DWPD), allowing multi-user NAS environments to do more with their data with lasting performance. The IronWolf 510 SSD is reliable with 1.8 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) in a PCIe form factor, two years of Rescue Data Recovery Services, and a five-year limited warranty. IronWolf Health Management helps analyze drive health and will soon be available on compatible NAS systems.

Intel and Micron have signed a new agreement for the production of 3D XPoint memory. As currently the only source of 3D XPoint memory solutions, Micron will get a significant increase in cash flow coming from Intel for the memory production. While Intel and Micron ended their partnership on 3D XPoint memory, they have signed a new contract for the production and supply of new 3D XPoint wafers to Intel. This shows that the demand for 3D XPoint memory is strong, so Intel needs production capacity to deliver the memory, and Micron is the obvious choice.

Previously, Intel sold its ownership of Lehi fab based in Utah, which was manufacturing the 3D XPoint memory solutions, so it was left to Micron to use. However, they signed a new deal and now Micron is in charge of manufacturing and addressing the supply issues for Intel's future Optane products. The new agreement comes with changed pricing and forecast of the sales, so Intel is likely paying more cash to Micron this time.

A report via DigiTimes paints a bleak image on shipments for motherboards and GPUs. According to the publication, citing sources close to motherboard makers, the initial impact of the outbreak severely affected production - and the entire supply chain ecosystem needed to ferry these across the world. Alongside reduced demand in China (reported to be down 50% YoY and unlikely to pick up until July at the earliest) and other countries, the stage is set for a record low in some of our most favored hardware pieces.

Market observers had expected a seasonal increase in demand entering Q3 2020 which may never come to fruition, as DigiTimes also mentions AMD, Intel and NVIDIA as being unlikely to achieve their target sales for this time period. The reduced demand could see prices come down on components and various hardware pieces, should it linger for longer than the fabrication bottlenecks factories are currently facing. Some publications are pointing towards this drop in demand as a reason for NVIDIA to delay their expected GTC announcements, which the company's CEO, Jensen Huang, has already come out saying "Could wait".

Sony has announced via Twitter that their lead system architect Mark Cerny will "provide a deep dive into PS5's system architecture, and how it will shape the future of games" tomorrow. This is likely the start of Sony's marketing campaign for the release of the PS5 which is due out Holidays 2020.

The Japanese company has remained puzzlingly tight-lipped regarding their next-gen games console, which is a far cry from Microsoft's position, who have been releasing details and teasing their next-gen Xbox Series X system for a while now. It remains to be seen how Sony's system will differ from Microsoft's Xbox Series X, since most specs are rumored to be close on both consoles. The underlying Zen 2 architecture for the CPUs is confirmed in both consoles, and so should the fabrication process and RDNA2-based graphics with dedicated ray tracing hardware. It remains to be seen how the companies will aim to differentiate their offerings.

EK Water Blocks, the European premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, unveiled another sTRX4-based monoblock made for TRX40 AORUS MASTER motherboard. This time, during the development of the monoblock, EK's engineering team went for a more elaborate approach, which can be seen from the shape of the monoblock. This is a complete all-in-one (CPU and motherboard) liquid cooling solution for the Aorus motherboard that is based on AMD TRX40 chipset for AMD Ryzen 3rd generation Threadripper processors.

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announces the ratification and public release of the Vulkan Ray Tracing provisional extensions, creating the industry's first open, cross-vendor, cross-platform standard for ray tracing acceleration. Primarily focused on meeting desktop market demand for both real-time and offline rendering, the release of Vulkan Ray Tracing as provisional extensions enables the developer community to provide feedback before the specifications are finalized. Comments and feedback will be collected through the Vulkan GitHub Issues Tracker and Khronos Developer Slack. Developers are also encouraged to share comments with their preferred hardware vendors. The specifications are available today on the Vulkan Registry.

Ray tracing is a rendering technique that realistically simulates how light rays intersect and interact with scene geometry, materials, and light sources to generate photorealistic imagery. It is widely used for film and other production rendering and is beginning to be practical for real-time applications and games. Vulkan Ray Tracing seamlessly integrates a coherent ray tracing framework into the Vulkan API, enabling a flexible merging of rasterization and ray tracing acceleration. Vulkan Ray Tracing is designed to be hardware agnostic and so can be accelerated on both existing GPU compute and dedicated ray tracing cores if available.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 512-gigabyte (GB) eUFS (embedded Universal Flash Storage) 3.1 for use in flagship smartphones. Delivering three times the write speed of the previous 512 GB eUFS 3.0 mobile memory, Samsung's new eUFS 3.1 breaks the 1 GB/s performance threshold in smartphone storage.

"With our introduction of the fastest mobile storage, smartphone users will no longer have to worry about the bottleneck they face with conventional storage cards," said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "The new eUFS 3.1 reflects our continuing commitment to supporting the rapidly increasing demands from global smartphone makers this year."

ABKONCORE is officially announcing the release and direct availability of the H600X PC gaming enclosure. The H600X is an ATX chassis that supports RGB SYNC and a great choice for your next build. This Mid-tower ATX case is suitable for standard ATX mainboards, Micro ATX and MINI ITX mainboards. Spacious design allows for the assembly or large components such as long graphic cards up to 358 mm and high CPU coolers up to 173 mm. Power supply support for ATX up to 350 mm long and placed at the bottom inside a designated PSU chamber for lower temperature results throughout the system. The exterior of the H600X is cool due to the front rectangular mesh with carbon style pattern design. Furthermore, this chassis is equipped with many dust filters, on the top and bottom. One of the side panels is made out of tinted tempered glass so that hardware can be viewed once the built-in RGB fans are turned on and colored light is glowing over installed hardware.

Functionality is the key word for the H600X case, internal support for tool free mounting for HDD/SSD drives and additional SSD brackets on the rear of the mainboard panel. Frontal I/O support through 2x USB3.0, HD Audio and mic-jacks. Maximum cooling possibilities via the various spaces such as the pre-installed 2x 200 mm RGB spectrum fans mounted in the front and the 1x 120 RGB Hurricane fan mounted in the rear. Furthermore, there is additional space to mount 2x 120 mm or 140 mm fans on the top as well as liquid cooling radiator size 120/240/360 mm at the front or top.

CD Projekt Red in a statement said that the extraordinary circumstances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will not affect the release date of "Cyberpunk 2077," arguably the most anticipated game of the year. The game is slated for 17 September, 2020 for Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. All CDPR employees have been ordered to work from home until further notice. Much of the content creation of "Cyberpunk 2077" is ready and the game is in post-production, game testing, and receiving pre-release varnish. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many large companies to deploy remote- or virtual desktops for their employees to fall in line with social distancing policies that aim to slow down the spread of the NoCV infection.

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Here is the first die visualization of AMD's new "Renoir" processor. Having made its debut with Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors, "Renoir" succeeds a decade-long legacy of AMD APUs that combine CPUs with powerful iGPUs. AMD designed "Renoir" on TSMC's 7 nm silicon fabrication process. The die measures 156 mm², and has a transistor-count of 9.8 billion. The die shot reveals distinct areas that look like the processor's 8 CPU cores, a cluster of GPU compute units, the integrated memory controllers, southbridge, and PHYs for the chip's various I/O.

"Renoir" features 8 CPU cores based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, divided into two 4-core CCXs (CPU complexes). Unlike on 8-core chiplets meant for "Matisse" or "Rome" MCMs, the "Renoir" CCX only features 4 MB of shared L3 cache, probably because latencies to the memory controller are low enough. The L2 cache per core is unchanged at 512 KB. The "total cache" (L2 + L3 on silicon) adds up to 12 MB. The iGPU of "Renoir" is a hybrid between "Vega" and "Navi." The SIMD components are carried over from "Vega," while the display- and multimedia engines are from "Navi." The iGPU features 8 NGCUs that add up to 512 stream processors. Infinity Fabric covers much of the die area, connecting the various components on the die. AMD introduced a new dual-channel integrated memory controller that supports LPDDR4x at up to 4233 MHz, and standard DDR4 up to 3200 MHz.

NVIDIA was supposed to launch its next-generation "Ampere" lineup of server-class GPUs at this year's GTC event. However, NVIDIA's president and CEO, Jensen Huang, shared the news that NVIDIA will now be showcasing the important GTC news it has prepared, but instead will only provide online materials from developers and researchers from all over the world. In the blog update, Mr. Huang said the following: "We have exciting products and news to share with you. But this isn't the right time. We're going to hold off on sharing our GTC news for now. That way, our employees, partners, the media and analysts who follow us, and our customers around the world can focus on staying safe and reducing the spread of the virus."

"We will still stream tons of great content from researchers and developers who have prepared great talks. This is a time to focus on our family, our friends, our community. Our employees are working from home. Many hourly workers will not need to work but they'll all be fully paid. Stay safe everyone. We will get through this together.", he added. While we won't get any new GPUs judging by this announcement, we can expect to see them once this situation is resolved.

Microsoft just put out of the complete hardware specs-sheet of its next-generation Xbox Series X entertainment system. The list of hardware can go toe to toe with any modern gaming desktop, and even at its production scale, we're not sure if Microsoft can break-even at around $500, possibly counting on game and DLC sales to recover some of the costs and turn a profit. To begin with the semi-custom SoC at the heart of the beast, Microsoft partnered with AMD to deploy its current-generation "Zen 2" x86-64 CPU cores. Microsoft confirmed that the SoC will be built on the 7 nm "enhanced" process (very likely TSMC N7P). Its die-size is 360.45 mm².

The chip packs 8 "Zen 2" cores, with SMT enabling 16 logical processors, a humongous step up from the 8-core "Jaguar enhanced" CPU driving the Xbox One X. CPU clock speeds are somewhat vague. It points to 3.80 GHz nominal and 3.66 GHz with SMT enabled. Perhaps the console can toggle SMT somehow (possibly depending on whether a game requests it). There's no word on the CPU's cache sizes.

Microsoft's upcoming Xbox Series X entertainment system is shaping up to be a technological monstrosity. Xbox group head at Microsoft, Phil Spencer, last revealed a picture of its semi-custom SoC back in January, by setting it as his Twitter display picture. Over the following weeks, many more technical details, such as the chip's 12 TFLOP/s combined compute power, would be let out. Spencer updated his display picture revealing a segment of the Xbox Series X mainboard with the SoC and memory chips surrounding it. The picture reveals the large SoC package in the center, surrounded on three sides by ten memory chips, possibly GDDR6, each with its own wiring to the SoC. This indicates that the SoC features a 320-bit wide memory interface.

As for the memory density, there's no way to tell. It could be 10 GB if those are 8 Gbit memory chips, or 20 GB if those are 16 Gbit. It boils down to which device the Xbox Series X the company wants to succeed. The Xbox One S features 8 GB of DDR3, while the spruced up Xbox One X features 12 GB of GDDR5. If the new Xbox Series X succeeds the latter, then it could very well feature 20 GB, more so given Microsoft's lofty design goals (4K UHD gaming with real-time ray-tracing). Microsoft leverages hUMA to use a common memory pool for both the CPU and GPU. Designed in collaboration with AMD on a TSMC 7 nm-class node (likely the N7P), the SoC features "Zen 2" CPU cores, and a GPU based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture.

Steam experienced its highest ever service load over the weekend, with over 20.3 million users concurrently logged in. Of these over 6.4 million were actively playing a game. Its previous service load record was a little over 19 million users, hit just last month (February 2020). This is particularly interesting because the week of 9th March didn't particularly have any big game releases, and according a report by The Verge, most of the 6.4 million gaming were hooked to old favorites, such as CS:GO (>1.02 million), PUBG (>700k), and Dota 2 (>500k).

This record could be just as temporary, with big releases such as "Doom Eternal" lined up for the upcoming weekend. A spike in online gaming and other forms of on-demand entertainment shouldn't surprise anyone in the middle of a global pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak has forced most governments quarantine large populations, forcing businesses to have their employees work from home. Steam remains the leading game digital distribution and DRM platform.

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Now in its 31st year, WWDC 2020 will take on an entirely new online format packed with content for consumers, press and developers alike. The online event will be an opportunity for millions of creative and innovative developers to get early access to the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS, and engage with Apple engineers as they work to build app experiences that enrich the lives of Apple customers around the globe.

"We are delivering WWDC 2020 this June in an innovative way to millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "The current health situation has required that we create a new WWDC 2020 format that delivers a full program with an online keynote and sessions, offering a great learning experience for our entire developer community, all around the world. We will be sharing all of the details in the weeks ahead."

Everspin Technologies, Inc., the world's leading developer and manufacturer of Magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM), today announced an amendment of its Spin-transfer Torque (STT-MRAM) joint development agreement (JDA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ), the world's leading specialty foundry. Everspin and GF have been partners on 40 nm, 28 nm, and 22 nm STT-MRAM development and manufacturing processes and have now updated their agreement to set the terms for a future project on an advanced 12 nm FinFET MRAM solution. Everspin is in production of discrete STT-MRAM solutions on 40 and 28 nm, including its award winning 1 Gb DDR4 device. GF recently announced it has achieved initial production of embedded MRAM (eMRAM) on its 22FDX platform.

Microsoft's Board of Directors (BoD) just got one more empty seat, but this time it is a big leave to the company. The co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, is stepping down from the company's BoD to focus more on philanthropy. In addition to Microsoft, Mr. Gates also decided to pull from Berkshire Hathaway, so he can focus his efforts on making a better world. In his own words: "I have made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on which I serve - Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway - to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change. The leadership at the Berkshire companies and Microsoft has never been stronger, so the time is right to take this step."

SilentiumPC rolled out several variants of its best-selling Fortis 3 tower-type CPU cooler since its 2015 debut, including a design refresh as the Fortis 3 v2, and its RGB variant late last year, which came with older standard RGB. Its latest iteration is the Fortis 3 EVO ARGB. The business end of the cooler, its large tower-type heatsink, is unchanged from the older variants. All that's really changed with the EVO ARGB is the fan.

The included Pulsar HP ARGB 140 mm fan features translucent white plastic making up not just the impeller, but also the frame. This allows bright addressable RGB LEDs embedded in the hub to project light not just through the fan blades, but also the frame. SilentiumPC has also re-tuned the motor to feature a speed range of 200 to 1,400 RPM (compared to 500 to 1,400 RPM on older models of Fortis 3). It also comes with a newer hydraulic bearing that enables a 50,000-hour service life. The fan takes in 4-pin PWM for its primary function, and 3-pin ARGB for the lighting. A "Nano Reset" ARGB LED controller comes included with the cooler, as does a 5 W/mK thermal compound. CPU socket compatibility hasn't changed: LGA2066, LGA115x, and AM4. Its price in Europe is 42.90€ (including VAT).

ASUS today unveiled its top-spec ROG Strix GA35 series gaming desktop, the GA35-G35DX. This pre-built desktop comes with some serious hardware specs geared toward AAA gaming at 4K UHD resolution and future-proofing for many years. Under the hood is a potent combination of an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics, an ROG Strix X570 motherboard, and 64 GB of DDR4-3200 memory. Storage includes a 1 TB PCI-Express 4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD, and a 2 TB SATA HDD. 802.11ac WLAN with Bluetooth 5.1, 1 GbE Ethernet, and SupremeFX integrated audio make for the rest of it.

ASUS is using a 240 mm AIO liquid CPU cooler for the Ryzen 9 3950X, while the graphics card retains ASUS's custom-cooling solution for the ROG Strix A11G variant of the RTX 2080 Ti. The ASUS in-house design case features several RGB embellishments which, along the with AIO and graphics card, can be controlled using the Aura Sync tab in Armory Crate. The case features a plastic handle along the top. The front hides a panel that reveals two 2.5-inch hot-swap drive bays with SATA 6 Gbps back-planes. Front-panel connectivity includes two USB 3.1 type-C, two USB 3.1 type-A, and HDA jacks. A 700 W 80 Plus PSU powers it. The desktop ships with Windows 10 Pro pre-installed. The company didn't reveal pricing.

EK Water Blocks, the premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is introducing a new variant of the extended compatibility high-performance water block specially designed for reference design based NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards. The EK-Quantum Vector Direct RTX RE Ti D-RGB.

EK-Quantum Vector Direct RTX RE Ti D-RGB
EK-Quantum Vector Direct RTX RE Ti D-RGB water block is the version of EK-Quantum Vector water block from which the terminal is removed for added compatibility with space-constrained cases. Instead, the fittings are screwed directly into the top, allowing for a narrower enclosure. This water block uses the signature EK single-slot slim look and covers the entire PCB length. This sophisticated cooling solution will transform your powerful NVIDIA graphics card into a minimalistic, elegant piece of hardware with addressable D-RGB LED lighting.

Today Logitech unveils a line of beautifully-crafted wireless chargers to make your charging experience simple and effortless. Introducing the Logitech POWERED family of wireless chargers - Logitech POWERED 3-in-1 Dock, Logitech POWERED Stand and Logitech POWERED Pad. These wireless chargers are designed to be simple, reliable and look great in any room, whether it be your bedroom, kitchen, office or living room.

Everest is a fully customizable, mechanical gaming keyboard that is a revolution in choice. Brought to you by Mountain, Everest can be pre-ordered here, from 95€ ($90 / £85 - depending on exchange rate). The Everest keyboard is available in Barebone, Core (TKL) and Max versions. The new stretch goal enables a variant of Everest in Midnight Black, a deep black anodized aluminium design, if the campaign reaches at least 100,000€ before it ends on April 2nd. If reached, the stretch goal will enable every backer to choose between Gunmetal Gray and Midnight Black.

Many backers requested stretch goals and a large part of the community asked for an all-black version of Everest. Mountain's focus on the user-centric approach doesn't end with the product design. "We appreciate all the support we have received so far and continue to listen to customer feedback," says Tobias Brinkmann, Founder & CEO of Mountain. "With the incredible success of Everest on Kickstarter, it didn't take long until we received the first inquiries of stretch goals and a Black version was in particular high demand. We are all about freedom of choice and delivering products that customers ask for, so we are pleased to be able to do so with the Midnight Black Edition!"Support the Everest keyboard Midnight Black Kickstarter goal stretch here.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.30.0 introduces several new feature- and stability updates, and adds support for new GPUs. To begin with, support is added for AMD Radeon RX 590 GME, Radeon Pro W5500, Pro V7350x2, FirePro 2260, and Instinct MI25 MxGPU; Intel UHD (Core i5-10210Y), and a rare GeForce GTS 450 Rev 2. TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.30.0 introduces support for reporting hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows 10 20H1 in the Advanced tab. The tab now also has the ability to show WDDM 2.7, Shader Model 6.6, DirectX Mesh Shaders, and DXR tier 1.1. A workaround for the DirectML detection on Windows 10 19041 built has been added. Graphics driver registry path is now displayed in the General section of the Advanced tab.

In the Sensors tab, the NVIDIA VDDC sensor has been renamed to "GPU voltage," and AMD's "GPU only power draw" sensor to "GPU chip-only power draw" to clarify that the sensor only measures the power draw of the GPU package and not the whole graphics card. AMD "Renoir" based processors and their iGPUs now show up as 7 nm. Windows Basic Display driver now no longer reports its status as WHQL or Beta. A crash during DirectX 12 detection has been fixed.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.30.0

The change-log follows.

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Huawei is planning a response to a recent administrative move by the U.S. Department of Commerce that makes it impossible for foreign companies such as Taiwan's TSMC to serve it. Huawei's mobile SoC design house subsidiary, HiSilicon, is highly dependant on TSMC to contract manufacture its SoCs on the company's 7 nm (N7), and various 10 nm-class FinFET nodes. Huawei is preparing to port some of its SoC designs to a 14 nm node of China's state-owned Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) as contingency. Without access to 7 nm, Huawei's plans to lead the global 5G infrastructure market would hit severe roadblocks. The U.S. move has triggered a heated (and somewhat loaded) reprisal from Global Times, a newspaper that's regarded in diplomatic circles as a platform for hawkish unofficial messaging by the Chinese government.

China could blackmail the U.S. into lifting its trade ban and a more recent supplier-access denial to Huawei, with potential shortages of essential medical supplies, particularly face masks. An eminent Chinese industrial analyst, Ma Jihua, told Chinese newspaper Global Times: "The Huawei problem has been elevated to one of national interests and Chinese firms may stop supplying much-needed face masks if the U.S. provokes [a fight with Huawei]." In addition to Chinese suppliers, American firms such as 3M manufacture face masks in China, besides several other consumables needed to fight epidemics, such as gloves, hazmat suits, goggles, etc.

Microsoft today released updates to Windows 10 patching a critical vulnerability found in its Server Message Block (SMB) version 3 protocol. Released to Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909, the Cumulative Update KB4551762 includes a patched SMB 3.1.1 protocol component. The update mitigates a security vulnerability with SMBv3 chronicled under CVE-2020-0796, which enabled remote code execution. "To exploit the vulnerability against a server, an unauthenticated attacker could send a specially crafted packet to a targeted SMBv3 server. To exploit the vulnerability against a client, an unauthenticated attacker would need to configure a malicious SMBv3 server and convince a user to connect to it," reads the Microsoft security advisory. To get the update, simply make Windows Update "check for updates," or get the msu files from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Windows 10 and Windows Server Cumulative Update KB4551762

Stock markets around the world are experiencing a spectacular crash riding on COVID-19 investor fears, wiping out trillions of Dollars in investor wealth worldwide. Prominent indices around the world report some of the highest intra-day falls since the 2008 financial crisis. Tech stocks are hardly immune, with AMD reporting a 14.64% fall in share price settling down at 39.01 (it was over 48 right after the company's 2020 Financial Analyst Day just last week). NVIDIA is another big loser at the markets, with a 12.24% fall and 216.31 share price. Intel is right behind, with a 11.85% fall down to 45.54, and Micron Technology down 11.23% at 38.81.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced it began sampling the industry's first universal flash storage (UFS) multichip package (uMCP) with low-power DDR5 (LPDDR5) DRAM. The uMCP provides high-density and low-power storage designed to fit on slim and compact midrange smartphone designs.

Micron's new uMCP5 packaging builds on the company's innovation and leadership in multichip form factors. Micron uMCPs combine low-power DRAM with NAND and an onboard controller, using 40% less space compared to a two-chip solution. This optimized configuration saves power, reduces memory footprint and enables smaller and more agile smartphone designs.

COVID-19 has brought many industries in the world to an almost standstill as quarantine mechanisms are put in place in both public and private sectors. The economic impact of the - now declared pandemic by the World Health Organization - outbreak will likely be felt for years to come. Thank to that globalization and the interconnectedness of various markets, including the global supply chain.

In light of this, MSI has decided to extend the warranty period for products falling in the categories of desktops, motherboards, AIO computers, PC cases and monitors (this excludes graphics cards and laptops, which are also quite important in the overall companies' outlook). Furthermore, this warranty extension is limited to countries that have been the most affected by the recent outbreak - U.S., Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Microsoft today announced it was part of a global operation meant to disrupt the world's largest online criminal network. Dubbed Necurs, the network functioned as a botnet - a number of computers infected by malware or otherwise malicious software that are functioning on behalf of a botmaster. The botmaster is basically akin to an administrator - but for nefarious purposes.

Thought to be controlled by criminals based in Russia, Necurs spanned more than nine million computing devices across 35 countries, making it one of the largest spam email threat ecosystems known to authorities - besides being used for pump-and-dump stock scams, fake pharmaceutical spam email and "Russian dating" scams. Necurs was such a well-oiled machine that it was seen sending 3.8 million spam messages to over 40 million targets across a 58-day long time frame in the investigation.

TSMC will be doing good on their previous expectations for a H2 2020 ramp-up for high volume production (HVM) on their 5 nm manufacturing process. The new 5 nm fabrication process is an Extreme Ultraviolet lithography (EUV) one, with up to 14 layers being etchable onto the silicon wafers, as opposed to five and six, respectively, for TSMC's N7+ and N6 processes.

Volume production will start with Apple's A14 SoC, meant to be driving next-generation iPhones that should hit shelves by September this year (should the COVID-19 pandemic let it be so). Apple is using two thirds of TSMC's capacity for 5 nm as is with this SoC; it's currently unclear which client (or clients) are getting the leftover one third capacity. TSMC announced back in December that they were seeing yields upwards of 80% in 5 nm EUV fabrication, so now it's "just" a matter of monetizing the process until their 3 nm iteration comes online, expectedly, in 2022.

Microsoft's Xbox business head Phil Spencer announced that the company is planning to take the Xbox E3 Event online with a Digital Event. The 2020 edition of the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3), the world's largest video gaming industry trade show, was cancelled for the first time since its 1995 debut, in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Microsoft Xbox is one of its latest participants with an E3 event almost every year. The 2020 edition of E3 was particularly important for Microsoft, as the company was expected to shed more light on its next-generation game console platform (or platforms, according to some rumors). Particularly since Sony had already announced absence from the show, it would be a Microsoft-focused event. "E3 has always been an important moment for Team Xbox. Given this decision, this year we'll celebrate the next generation of gaming with the @Xbox community and all who love to play via an Xbox digital event," tweeted Spencer. He added that details on the timing of the Digital Event will be put out in the coming weeks.

Polish gaming powerhouse CD Projekt confirmed that it has no plans of sitting idle after finishing work on its magnum opus and the year's most anticipated game, "Cyberpunk 2077." In an interview with journalists, CD Projekt president Adam Kiciński announced that the company will begin work on the next chapter in "The Witcher" franchise. Kiciński wouldn't take names or call the game "The Witcher 4," but simply that the game will be set in the fictional universe by Andrzej Sapkowski. Kiciński stated that a small team within CDPR will be tasked with preparatory work on this game, while larger teams will focus on DLCs and content additions for "Cyberpunk 2077" over an extended period of time.

The world's largest gathering of video game publishers, developers, gamers, and associated artists, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, won't be held this year, according to an ArsTechnica report citing sources among members of ESA, the show's organizers. At the time of this writing, ESA made no formal announcement from the ESA about the show's fate - whether it's cancelled, delayed, or transformed into an online event like many other trade-shows this year. Most trade-shows scheduled for 2020 have suffered one of these three due to the COVID-19 outbreak that has recently gained "global pandemic" status by the World Health Organization. COVID-19 is a highly contagious respiratory tract infection that has claimed over 3,000 lives globally. This would be the first time that E3 has been cancelled since its debut edition in 1995.

Update Mar 12th: It's official, E3 2020 has been cancelled. "After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry - our fans, our employees, our exhibitors and our longtime E3 partners - we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, scheduled for June 9-11 in Los Angeles," says organizer ESA in its statement announcing the cancellation

NVIDIA's ANZ (Australia and New Zealand) Twitter handle posted a curious-looking teaser of something to look forward to on March 19. The now-deleted Tweet contained an animation showing the shape of an eye tracking two points of light crossing its iris. This date falls just a couple of days ahead of the March 22 debut of GTC 2020, the NVIDIA-promoted trade-show covering all things graphics tech. As many on the tweet and online forums discussing have pointed out, the announcement could probably be related to a commercial release of NVIDIA's foveated rendering technology that was demonstrated way back at SIGGRAPH 2016, at a time when VR and related technologies were all the rage.

The concept of foveated rendering is straightforward: eye-tracking is leveraged to ensure that areas of the frame you're looking at are rendered in greater detail than the others, to conserve system resources and improve performance. This is achieved by tracking your foveal vision (the primary part of your vision focused on detail), while shedding resources on parts of the frame that fall within your peripheral vision. Compared to 2016, rendering technologies to facilitate foveated rendering have advanced. A related technology is variable shading rate (VRS), which allows an application to render different parts of the scene at different levels of detail, and improve performance.A video presentation detailing NVIDIA's foveated rendering tech from 2016 follows.

Xilinx, Inc. today announced Versal Premium, the third series in the Versal ACAP portfolio. The Versal Premium series features highly integrated, networked and power-optimized cores and the industry's highest bandwidth and compute density on an adaptable platform. Versal Premium is designed for the highest bandwidth networks operating in thermally and spatially constrained environments, as well as for cloud providers who need scalable, adaptable application acceleration.

Versal is the industry's first adaptive compute acceleration platform (ACAP), a revolutionary new category of heterogeneous compute devices with capabilities that far exceed those of conventional silicon architectures. Developed on TSMC's 7-nanometer process technology, Versal Premium combines software programmability with dynamically configurable hardware acceleration and pre-engineered connectivity and security features to enable a faster time-to-market. The Versal Premium series delivers up to 3X higher throughput compared to current generation FPGAs, with built-in Ethernet, Interlaken, and cryptographic engines that enable fast and secure networks. The series doubles the compute density of currently deployed mainstream FPGAs and provides the adaptability to keep pace with increasingly diverse and evolving cloud and networking workloads.

A new class of security vulnerabilities affect Intel processors, which can cause them to leak out sensitive information if probed in a certain way, but that's not the worst news for Intel and its users. The software- or firmware-level mitigation for this vulnerability can inflict performance reductions "ranging from 2x to 19x," according to a report by The Register. A full mitigation for the new Load Value Injection (LVI) class of vulnerabilities requires Intel to redesign software compilers. The vulnerability is chronicled under CVE-2020-0551 and Intel-SA-00334. It is not a remote code execution threat, however, it puts multi-tenant machines, such as physical servers handling multiple tenants via virtual servers.

"LVI turns previous data extraction attacks around, like Meltdown, Foreshadow, ZombieLoad, RIDL and Fallout, and defeats all existing mitigations. Instead of directly leaking data from the victim to the attacker, we proceed in the opposite direction: we smuggle — "inject" — the attacker's data through hidden processor buffers into a victim program and hijack transient execution to acquire sensitive information, such as the victim's fingerprints or passwords," the reasearchers write in the abstract of their paper describing the vulnerability. Anti-virus manufacturer BitDefender independently discovered LVI and shared its study with Intel. The company could publish its findings in February. Additional technical details are found in the group's website here.Many Thanks to biffzinker for the tip.

BIOSTAR has been a manufacturer of robust and highly reliable motherboards for many years and has a wide range of models on both Intel and AMD platforms to choose from and a plethora of supplementary components catering to many user preferences.

Designed in the Mini-ITX form factor, the new BIOSTAR A10N-9630E motherboard is built with form and functionality to rival everything else in the market. With an inbuilt AMD A10-9630P quad-core processor and support for AMD Radeon R5 graphics, the BIOSTAR A10N-9630E is sleek, reliable and affordable suited for consumers who like to run basic tasks such as browsing the web, sending emails and running office applications and is perfect for many industrial applications because its ultra-small Mini-ITX form factor suited for small builds that save office space creating a neat, tidy workspace. The A10N-9630E motherboard is also designed for edge computing with better performance and low power consumption.

MSI, a world-leading motherboard manufacturer, proudly introduces two new B450 MAX motherboards, B450 GAMING PRO CARBON MAX WIFI and B450M BAZOOKA MAX WIFI. For the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors, the new MAX motherboards are optimized with best compatibility in every aspects. These two new MAX motherboards can satisfy more gamers and users.

As the most iconic motherboard for mainstream gamers, this time GAMING PRO CARBON also includes a MAX version for stylish gamers to perfectly match with 3rd Gen Ryzen processors. With millions colors and 17 LED effects, Mystic Light offers customization options for ever-changing RGB experience. B450 GAMING PRO CARBON MAX WIFI is also equipped with USB 3.2 Gen2 solution with up to 10 Gbps transfer speed. Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic 3 provides stable and high quality sound effects with premium components. Furthermore, concerning the higher performance-based 3rd Gen Ryzen processors, B450 GAMING PRO CARBON MAX WIFI includes Extended Heatsink Design and M.2 Shield to ensure better heat dissipation effects and lower temperature for CPUs and M.2 devices. Flash BIOS Button becomes more and more important and gives more convenience for BIOS updates.

Bethesda today released the final system requirements for its upcoming massacre-fest Doom Eternal. The game, which is geared for release just 10 days from now (March 20th), promises to be one of the most impressive (and fluid) games in recent times, if the original, modern Doom is anything to go by.

Bethesda has even gone so far so as to list preferred specs for gamers that want to play in 4K at 60 FPS or in 1440p at 120 FPS: and these are pretty abusive, with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti being required - likely because of its gargantuan 11 GB VRAM. AMD's Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel's Core i9-9900K are the requirements here, alongside 16 GB of system RAM. Check after the break for a breakdown on recommended specs for other resolutions and quality settings, and for Bethesda's trailer showing off customization options for your DOOM slayer. Do you have what it takes to run the game?

A Steam page store has appeared for Guerrilla Games' PlayStation exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn. If you haven't played this game yet, I'll assume you don't have a PlayStation; and if so, boy: are you in for a treat. Horizon Zero Dawn has you playing as Aloy, a native to this alternate reality where dinosaur-like machines have taken over the wilds. As you expand on the story and go on to discover the secrets to this world - and to humanity's downfall - you'll travel across a seamless, richly-detailed open-world experience that rivals The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.

Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition will feature both the base game and its The Frozen Wilds Expansion, which adds dozens of hours, new equipment, new lands, skills, and Machines for you to hunt. This looks like Sony's way (and continued efforts) to show you, years later, what you've been missing out on in the PlayStation platform, and I bet Sony's wishing these exclusive games hitting the PC will give you the PlayStation 5 hitch. Now if only the same happened for the incredible God of War...

NVIDIA today released the latest version of its GeForce software. Version 442.59 WHQL of the software comes game-ready for "Call of Duty: Warzone," which went live earlier today. The drivers also fix a handful of issues. For starters, it fixes game crashes with "NBA 2K20." A blue screen crash when plugging in a VR headset to a notebook. The Windows 7 version of the drivers come with a check for Windows SHA2 patches during installation. Without these patches, the installer won't continue. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 442.59 Game ReadyThe change-log follows.

Renowned for its innovative and high-performance contributions to the world of PC cases, Kolink has created the Balance Midi-Tower as a feature-rich gaming case. This case may have a stunning exterior, but behind this facade lies a lot of space for powerful gaming hardware as well. All this gaming goodness can be admired through the tempered glass side panel, and as it supports motherboards up to E-ATX in form factor, there will be plenty to look at. A thoughtfully included PSU shroud also helps users stash away unsightly cables.

The front of the case, with its fine mesh and air vents, helps ensure not only good airflow, but it also helps accentuate the digitally addressable RGB-LED strip and the look of the case as a whole. A switch on the I/O panel allows the lighting to be controlled. Alternatively, the strip can be connected directly to the motherboard and controlled that way instead. The overall ventilation of the case is also helped by the presence of a fine mesh with an integrated dust filter on the top. A pre-installed 120 mm fan is also equipped with dARGB lighting.

MMD, the brand license partner for Philips monitors, announces the launch of the 34" (86.36 cm) Philips 346P1CRH LCD monitor. Featuring a curved UWQHD display with DisplayHDR 400, this monitor delivers an good visual performance.

In addition to offering a host of convenient connectivity features such as a built-in USB-C docking station and KVM switch, and a wide array of technologies and innovations to enhance user comfort and ensure the most productive, enjoyable work day possible.

A Dutch website has listed what seems to be the entirety of Intel's upcoming 10th gen CPU lineup, with prices to boot. Of course, we have to take these listings with various grains of salt: e-tailers are known to sometimes display higher pricing than the manufacturer's MSRP when products still haven't been listed on other websites.

The listing below showcases model number and pricing for each Intel processor. Should this pricing actually come to pass in a generalized way, we're looking at Intel's Core i9-10900KF processor (which is currently listed for €567.73 including 21% VAT) competing with AMD's closest-priced CPU Ryzen 9 3800X, which is already street-priced at €449. The Core i5 10400F, on the other hand, is listed at €196.99, which means it currently competes with AMD's Ryzen 5 3600X at €199.99. It remains to be seen which of these CPUs will win in a direct shootout. Remember that for US pricing you typically just swap out the € currency for $, and you've got your price estimate pretty close to final.

The B550 chipset has been absent for a while, meaning that mid-tier motherboard models were lacking and that space is about to be filled. So far, the only thing we got was a B550A chipset, which lacked proper support for PCIe 4.0 connection, based on the refreshed B450 chipset. The B550A supports only one PCIe 4.0 slot, the one connected directly to CPU, while the regular, non-A version is said to deliver proper PCIe 4.0 configuration. The first picture of AMD's upcoming B550 motherboard has appeared.

Thanks to the findings of VideoCardz, we have a picture of a B550 motherboard manufactured by SOYO, a Chinese motherboard manufacturer, and the brand behind Maxsun. Pictured below is a Micro-ATX format motherboard featuring two x16 PCIe 4.0 slots and one smaller, x1 slot. There are two DDR4 slots, along with M.2 PCIe 4.0 connector. Additionally, it has some interesting dragon-inspired masking as well.

Cybersecurity researcher Moritz Lipp and his colleagues from the Graz University of Technology and the University of Rennes uncovered two new security vulnerabilities affecting all AMD CPU microarchitectures going back to 2011, detailed in a research paper titled "Take A Way." These include "Bulldozer" and its derivatives ("Piledriver," "Excavator," etc.,) and the newer "Zen," "Zen+," and "Zen 2" microarchitectures. The vulnerabilities are specific to AMD's proprietary L1D cache way predictor component. It is described in the security paper's abstract as a means for the processor to "predict in which cache way a certain address is located, so that consequently only that way is accessed, reducing the processor's power consumption."

By reverse engineering the L1D cache way predictor in AMD microarchitectures dating from 2011 to 2019, Lipp, et al, discovered two new attack vectors with which an attacker can monitor the victim's memory accesses. These vectors are named "Collide+Probe," and "Load+Reload." The paper describes the first vector as follows: "With Collide+Probe, an attacker can monitor a victim's memory accesses without knowledge of physical addresses or shared memory when time-sharing a logical core." The second vector is described as "With Load+Reload, we exploit the way predictor to obtain highly-accurate memory-access traces of victims on the same physical core." The two vulnerabilities have not been assigned CVE entries at the time of this writing. The research paper, however, describes the L1D cache way predictor in AMD processors as being vulnerable to attacks that can reveal contents of memory or even keys to a vulnerable AES implementation. For now there is no mitigation to these attacks, but the company is reportedly working on firmware and driver updates. Access the research paper here.

Intel is rumored to be aligning its future-generation Xe GPU development with TSMC's node development cycle, with the company reportedly negotiating with the Taiwanese foundry for 6 nm and 3 nm allocation for its large Xe GPUs. Intel's first Xe discrete GPUs for the market, however, are reportedly built on the company's own 10 nm+ silicon fabrication process.

While Intel's fascination with TSMC 3 nm is understandable, seeking out TSMC's 6 nm node raises eyebrows. Internally referred to as "N6," the 6 nm silicon fabrication node at TSMC is expected to go live either towards the end of 2020 or early 2021, which is when Intel's 10 nm+ node is expected to pick up volume production, beginning with the company's "Tiger Lake" processors. Perhaps a decision has been made internally to ensure that Xe doesn't eat too much into Intel's own foundry capacities meant for processor manufacturing, and to instead outsource Xe manufacturing to third-party foundries like TSMC and Samsung eventually. Way back in April 2019 it was rumored that Intel was evaluating Samsung as a foundry partner for Xe.

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Activision yesterday announced that its next Call of Duty game, called Warzone, is launching today. At around 8 AM PST, owners of Modern Warfare will be able to experience the Warzone couple of hours before everyone, while the rest of the players will have to wait until noon PST to play. The game itself is a massive, free-to-play, battle royale style game that can fit 150 players in the single match and is cross-play enabled, meaning that folks with PCs can join forces with Xbox and PlayStation players. The download size of the game is going to be around 80-100 GB alone, so players will have to free up some space on their disks for that. Below you can watch the trailer and see how the game looks before it officially drops today.

One of the world's leading PC components and peripheral manufacturers, is pleased to announce that they have entered a partnership with Exertis, CCL Computers, Ebuer.com, Novatech, and Box.co to expand the GeIL brand across the United Kingdom. There are more channels to purchase GeIL's first-class product in the United Kingdom and better overall customer experience. A total win-win for PC enthusiasts.

"We are excited to have this opportunity to bring our line of popular memory products to even more customers across the United Kingdom, commented Jennifer Huang, Vice President at GeIL Memory. "We put a great deal of thought and consideration into whom we would work with, and these are all well-established and highly respected companies collaborating with us. Through this new partnership, our customers are going to get amazing access to our memory, as well as exceptional price points."

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one gaming and multimedia solutions and high-performance storage is proud to share the new and wider lineup of iGame family of enthusiast and gaming products from COLORFUL. As a worldwide brand, COLORFUL has evolved its products to compete on the world stage. With a bright history of working together with our customers as well as the esports market, COLORFUL has created a unique brand for its iGame family of products that now covers much more than just graphics cards but has extended to motherboards, solid-state drives and also gaming and content creator PCs as well as AIO systems.

COLORFUL has had a long history working with gamers to create specific features and products to help further improve them. As years passed, more and more users provide feedback which allows COLORFUL to grow and further evolve its offerings. Thus, the iGame brand was born. The iGame family of COLORFUL products are the influence of the large gamer-base that company has, putting their suggestions and elevating the brand from there. Starting with customization options from it early days, the COLORFUL customer base has now grown and improved to the point where the iGame brand is synonymous with high-performance gaming experience that embodies the customers' desire for an unbridled gaming experience.

NVIDIA today announced that, in light of the spread of the coronavirus, it is deferring plans to deliver a webcast keynote as part of the digital version of its GPU Technology Conference later this month. The company will, instead, issue on Tuesday, March 24, news announcements that had been scheduled to be shared in the keynote. This will be followed by an investor call with NVIDIA founder and Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, which will be accessible to other listeners. The call will begin at 8am Pacific time and will be accessible at investor.nvidia.com.

NVIDIA had initially planned to host its 11th annual GTC on March 22-26 at the San Jose Convention Center, with an anticipated audience of 10,000. Amid the worsening coronavirus situation, the company said earlier this month that it was shifting much of the conference to its digital platform. The company believes that continuing public health uncertainties would challenge its ability to produce and deliver a digital keynote. Other components of GTC Digital will still take place, including live webinars, recorded talks and panels, research posters, trainings, and Connect with Experts sessions available starting Wednesday, March 25. More details will be provided in the coming days.

Hold on to your helmets: a wild rumor that Intel may be looking to introduce the same design considerations as they already did with their Lakefield architecture has appeared. According to momomo via Twitter (a user who has already shared many rumors and details in the PC hardware space) as well as some other sources, Intel is looking to bring a Big.Little-like design (which Intel calls Hybrid architecture) to the desktop platform in the form of Alder Lake-S, to be reportedly built on the 10 nm process. While Intel's Lakefield (especially geared for the mobile market) only sported four Atom (Intel's low power) Tremont cores combined with one high-performance Sunny Cove core, Alder Lake-S could sport as many as an 8+8 configuration, with a TDP currently set up to 80 W (and up to 125 W TDP is also set in the revealing slides with a disclosure regarding investigating performance scaling in up to 150 W TDP).

Should this actual Alder Lake-S product materialize in the 10 nm process, this could be a way for Intel to salvage what it can from the 10 nm process for the desktop platform. As we know from multiple reports on the state of Intel's 10 nm, yields and operating frequencies aren't close to what was expected, and Intel's CFO George Davis even said at last week's Morgan Stanley's Analyst Conference that their 10 nm process wouldn't be as profitable as even 22 nm, which does show that Intel is already looking past this process for their 7 nm deployment. A Big.Little design for a desktop architecture does seem like a more plausible design decision for a struggling process than a full 16-core monolithic die such as those Intel currently employs.

Another one bites the dust: 2K Games has told NVIDIA that it is removing their games catalog from the GeForce Now game streaming service. Fresh out of beta little more than a month now - with a then-touted 1,000 plus games library - the green team's streaming service, which was received with good reviews and good customer feedback, is now looking ever more stale as publishers keep leaving the service in droves.

It is still unclear why publishers are quitting the streaming service, but this doesn't spell good to the future of streaming. The fact that users only need to import a copy of their already purchased game to GeForce Now can be a reason, with removed the need for gamers to re-purchase their games across multiple (mobile or non-mobile) gaming platforms. Another reason may be that publishers are fearful this streaming ability from NVIDIA could cut into sales from next-gen consoles, since users wouldn't have to upgrade their hardware to be able to play the latest and greatest, non-exclusive titles to be released for next-gen systems. Whatever the reason, this doesn't bode well for the future of NVIDIA's streaming efforts.

EK, the European premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing a new Intel X299 socket based monoblock belonging to the Quantum Line of products, the EK-Quantum Momentum ROG Rampage VI Encore D-RGB. This monoblock is engineered specifically for the ASUS ROG Rampage VI Extreme Encore motherboard from ASUS.

EK-Quantum Momentum ROG Rampage VI Encore D-RGB
This is a complete all-in-one (CPU and motherboard) liquid cooling solution for Intel Socket 2066 Core X-Series Processors and the monoblock is covering the entire VRM section of the ASUS ROG Rampage VI Extreme Encore motherboard.

Kingston Digital, a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, announced today the refresh of its 'Canvas' series Flash cards to Canvas Plus. The new SD and microSD lineup include Kingston's first UHS-II cards. To keep up with Canvas Plus, new MobileLite Plus UHS-II readers have been engineered to support blazing fast read speeds. Canvas Plus represents the next generation of SD and microSD cards with increased performance for DSLRs, 4K/8K video production, Android devices, action cams and drones.

When AMD pushed out the Radeon RX 590 in late-2018, its key spec was that the "Polaris 20" die had been ported to GlobalFoundries 12LPP (12 nm) silicon fabrication node, yielding headroom to dial up clock speeds over the 14 nm RX 580. The underlying silicon was labeled "Polaris 30" as it was the second major version of the "Polaris 10" die. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 16-series beat the RX 590 both in performance and price, with even the GTX 1650 Super performing on-par, and the GTX 1660 beating it. It turns out that AMD has a lot of unsold 14 nm "Polaris 20" inventory to go around, and it wants to release them out as the new RX 590 GME.

An Expreview review of an XFX-branded RX 590 GME confirms that the the chip is indeed based on the "Polaris 20 XTR" silicon which is built on the 14 nm process. The card has GPU clock speeds that appear similar to reference clock speeds of the RX 590, with 1460 MHz base compared to 1469 MHz of the original RX 590. But this is where the similarities end. In its testing, Expreview found that the RX 590 GME is on average 5% slower than the RX 590, and performs halfway between the RX 580 and the original RX 590, which are differentiated by a roughly 10% performance gap. The 5% performance deficit would put the RX 590 GME on par with the new RX 5500 XT 4 GB, and trading blows with the GTX 1650 Super. Thankfully, the RX 590 GME is priced lower than RX 590 cards (about 7.7% cheaper), and could be very region-specific. The fact that the RX 590 GME is being sold with full AIB partner branding and retail packaging, shows that this isn't an OEM-only product. Read the complete review in the source link below.

Here are two of the first pictures of Intel's upcoming Core i5-10400 processor, based on the company's 10th generation, 14 nm "Comet Lake-S" silicon. With its 10th generation, Intel is looking to bolster its Core i5 desktop processor series by introducing HyperThreading and increased L3 cache to existing price-points. The i5-10400 is hence a 6-core/12-thread processor with 12 MB of shared L3 cache at its disposal, compared to 9th and 8th generation Core i5 desktop chips being 6-core/6-thread with 9 MB of L3 cache.

The Core i5-10400 succeeds the popular Core i5-9400/F and its equally popular predecessor, the i5-8400. The iGPU-devoid i5-9400F in particular owed its popularity to Intel pricing it $15-20 less than the standard i5-9400. The upcoming i5-10400 is expected to be priced under the $200 mark, with the i5-10400F being similarly discounted. Both chips feature identical CPU specs: 2.90 GHz nominal clock speeds, up to 4.30 GHz maximum Turbo Boost, and 4.00 GHz all-core Turbo Boost. As the chip lacks an unlocked multiplier, its TDP is reportedly rated at 65 W. The chip will compete with AMD's Ryzen 5 3600 for sub-$200 supremacy. The 10th generation Core desktop processor family is built in the new LGA1200 package, and launches alongside the new Intel 400-series chipset, in April.

Rambus, a maker of various Interface IP solutions, today announced the latest addition to its high-speed memory interface IP product portfolio in form of High Bandwidth Memory 2E (HBM2E) controller and physical layer (PHY) IP solution. The two IPs are enabling customers to completely integrate the HBM2E memory into their products, given that Rambus provides a complete solution for controlling and interfacing the memory. The design that Ramus offers can support for 12-high DRAM stacks of up to 24 Gb devices, making for up to 36 GB of memory per 3D stack. This single 3D stack is capable of delivering 3.2 Gbps over a 1024-bit wide interface, delivering 410 GB/s of bandwidth per stack.

The HBM2E controller core is DFI 3.1 compatible and has support for logic interfaces like AXI, OCP, or a custom one, so the customer can choose a way to integrate this core in their design. With a purchase of their HBM2E IP, Rambus will provide source code written in Hardware Description Language (HDL) and GDSII file containing the layout of the interface.

Acer Japan has today launched two predator monitors based on IPS technology. The two monitors in question are 24.5-inch and 27-inch IPS panels based on 1080p resolution named XB253QGXbmiiprzx (the 24.5-inch model) and XB273GXbmiiprzx (27-inch model), which is not a typo and are the actual name of the models. Both of them feature Display HDR400 certifications, meaning that their maximum brightness is 400 nits. Other specifications include a maximum supported refresh rate of 240 Hz with 1 ms GtG response time that can be reduced to 0.5 ms response time with override mode. There are two options of frame syncing, where one is NVIDIA's G-SYNC, and the other is VESA's Adaptive-Sync. Both of them support up to 240 Hz refresh rate, meaning that you can use any card to get syncing at a high refresh rate. The IPS screen covers 99% of the sRGB color gamut.

For connectivity, Acer has equipped these monitors with one DisplayPort 1.2a, and two HDMI 2.0b ports used for input. There is a USB hub with four USB 3.0 ports and one 3.5 mm headphone jack output. The monitor is rocking two 2 W integrated stereo speakers. When it comes to the pricing, the smaller 24.5-inch model is priced at around ¥46,000 ($430 in the United States) and ¥55,000 (around $500 in the US).

AMD at its Financial Analyst Day 2020 presentation made a major clarification about its silicon fabrication process. It was previously believed that the company's upcoming "Zen 3" CPU microarchitecture and RDNA2 graphics architectures were based on TSMC's N7+ (7 nm EUV) silicon fabrication process because AMD would mark the two as "7 nm+" in its marketing slides. Throughout its Financial Analyst Day presentation, however, AMD avoided using that marker, and resorted to an amorphous "7 nm" marker, prompting one of the financial analysts to seek a clarification. At the time, AMD responded that they were aligning their marketing with that of TSMC, and hence chose to use "7 nm" in its new slides.

It turns out that the next step to TSMC N7, the company's current-generation 7 nm DUV silicon fabrication node, isn't N7+ (7 nm EUV), but rather it has a nodelet along the way, which the foundry refers to as N7P. This is a generational refinement of N7, but does not use EUV lithography, which means it may not offer the 15-20 percent gains in transistor densities offered by N7+ over N7. AMD clarified that "7 nm+" in its past presentations did not intend to signify N7+, and that the "+" merely denoted an improvement over N7. At the same time, it won't specify whether "Zen 3" and RDNA2 are based on N7P or N7+, so the company doesn't rule out N7+, either. We'll probably learn more as we near the late-2020 launch of "Zen 3" as EPYC "Milan."

AMD's 4th generation EPYC line of enterprise processors, now into design stage, impressed the United States Department of Energy enough that it wants to deploy it in "El Capitan," a 2 ExaFLOP supercomputer that will be the world's most powerful, when it goes online around 2022. Codenamed "Genoa," 4th gen EPYC implements AMD's "Zen 4" microarchitecture. While AMD didn't get into too many details about it in its 2020 Financial Analyst Day address, there are a couple of details.

For starters, "Zen 4" continues on AMD's trajectory of adding IPC gains with each generation. Secondly, "Zen 4" will leverage the advanced 5 nm silicon fabrication process, which should significantly increase transistor densities over even the most advanced iterations of 7 nm, such as 7 nm EUV. "Zen 4" comes out roughly the same time as the RDNA3 and CDNA2 graphics architectures, and AMD's 3rd generation Infinity Fabric interconnect that enables exascale supercomputers thanks to coherent unified memory and vast shared memory pools between CPUs and compute GPUs. Elsewhere in the roadmap, we see AMD announcing that its upcoming "Zen 3" microarchitecture and its enterprise implementation, the EPYC "Milan" processor, will release only toward the end of 2020. This would give EPYC "Rome" close to 6 calendar quarters of market leadership.

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At AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su's keynote address at the company's 2020 Financial Analyst Day, a curious slide element caught our eye - a never before seen graphics card design that bears AMD insignia. This is quite possibly AMD's upcoming reference design. The design fits into the language of sharp dark ridges and red accents the company adopted first with its Radeon RX 5700 XT MBA (made by AMD) graphics card, and the hypothetical RX 5600 XT reference design that never made it to the market as the SKU was a partner-exclusive.

In Reddit AMAs following the RX 5700 series launch, corporate vice-president and manager for Radeon, Scott Herkelman, mentioned that all subsequent Radeon RX products by the company would ditch the lateral-blower design in favor of an axial multi-fan design that's characteristic of most partner-designed cards. NVIDIA made that switch with its RTX 20-series Founders Edition cards, and AMD too implemented a triple axial fan design for its Radeon VII card, before switching back to a conventional lateral-blower design for its RX 5700 series. AMD would go on to give the reference design RX 5600 XT an axial dual-fan cooler.

With its 7 nm RDNA architecture that debuted in July 2019, AMD achieved a nearly 50% gain in performance/Watt over the previous "Vega" architecture. At its 2020 Financial Analyst Day event, AMD made a big disclosure: that its upcoming RDNA2 architecture will offer a similar 50% performance/Watt jump over RDNA. The new RDNA2 graphics architecture is expected to leverage 7 nm+ (7 nm EUV), which offers up to 18% transistor-density increase over 7 nm DUV, among other process-level improvements. AMD could tap into this to increase price-performance by serving up more compute units at existing price-points, running at higher clock speeds.

AMD has two key design goals with RDNA2 that helps it close the feature-set gap with NVIDIA: real-time ray-tracing, and variable-rate shading, both of which have been standardized by Microsoft under DirectX 12 DXR and VRS APIs. AMD announced that RDNA2 will feature dedicated ray-tracing hardware on die. On the software side, the hardware will leverage industry-standard DXR 1.1 API. The company is supplying RDNA2 to next-generation game console manufacturers such as Sony and Microsoft, so it's highly likely that AMD's approach to standardized ray-tracing will have more takers than NVIDIA's RTX ecosystem that tops up DXR feature-sets with its own RTX feature-set.

Researchers have found another vulnerability Inside Intel's Converged Security and Management Engine (CSME). For starters, the CSME is a tiny CPU within a CPU that has access to whole data throughput and is dedicated to the security of the whole SoC. The CSME system is a kind of a black box, given that Intel is protecting its documentation so it can stop its copying by other vendors, however, researchers have discovered a flaw in the design of CSME and are now able to exploit millions of systems based on Intel CPUs manufactured in the last five years.

Discovered by Positive Technologies, the flaw is lying inside the Read-Only Memory (ROM) of the CSME. Given that the Mask ROM is hardcoded in the CPU, the exploit can not be fixed by a simple firmware update. The researchers from Positive Technologies describe it as such: "Unfortunately, no security system is perfect. Like all security architectures, Intel's had a weakness: the boot ROM, in this case. An early-stage vulnerability in ROM enables control over the reading of the Chipset Key and generation of all other encryption keys. One of these keys is for the Integrity Control Value Blob (ICVB). With this key, attackers can forge the code of any Intel CSME firmware module in a way that authenticity checks cannot detect. This is functionally equivalent to a breach of the private key for the Intel CSME firmware digital signature, but limited to a specific platform."

AMD at its 2020 Financial Analyst Day event unveiled its upcoming CDNA GPU-based compute accelerator architecture. CDNA will complement the company's graphics-oriented RDNA architecture. While RDNA powers the company's Radeon Pro and Radeon RX client- and enterprise graphics products, CDNA will power compute accelerators such as Radeon Instinct, etc. AMD is having to fork its graphics IP to RDNA and CDNA due to what it described as market-based product differentiation.

Data centers and HPCs using Radeon Instinct accelerators have no use for the GPU's actual graphics rendering capabilities. And so, at a silicon level, AMD is removing the raster graphics hardware, the display and multimedia engines, and other associated components that otherwise take up significant amounts of die area. In their place, AMD is adding fixed-function tensor compute hardware, similar to the tensor cores on certain NVIDIA GPUs.

AMD Financial Analyst Day presents an opportunity for AMD to talk straight with the finance industry about the company's current financial health, and a taste of what's to come. Guidance and product teasers made during this time are usually very accurate due to the nature of the audience. In this live blog, we will post information from the Financial Analyst Day 2020 as it unfolds.20:59 UTC: The event has started as of 1 PM PST. CEO Dr Lisa Su takes stage.

EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer is launching its most extreme fan to date, the EK-Furious Meltemi 120. This 38 mm thick extreme high-static pressure radiator cooling fan is designed purely for highest-performance computer liquid cooling systems. Developed in-house on the basis of the renowned EK-Vardar fans, they have a wide PWM range of operation and the highest speed of up to 3500 rpm. Due to a 38 mm thick frame, there is space for an upgraded motor and far superior performance compared to any standard 25 mm thick fan at the same RPM range.

The Meltemi family of cooling fans carries the name of a type of strong, dry northern winds of the Aegean Sea. The name Meltemi is derived from Italian mal tempo meaning "bad weather", while we can say that the EK's Meltemi fans are "bad news" for high temperatures. These fans provide the best possible performance in pull mode. Such a regime evens out the airflow through the entire surface of the radiator since the motor hub dead zone effect is lessened. The fan is equipped with a red sleeved cable just to warn off those curious little fingers from getting hurt. Seriously, 3500 rpm is no joke, and you should be extra careful around these fans if they are in operation.

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.2.2 got re-released as a WHQL-signed driver by AMD. The company had originally released it as a beta on February 28. The drivers come with optimization for "Zombie Army 4: Dead War," but more importantly, fix a large number of software bugs plaguing Adrenalin 2020 Edition since its December 2019 release. These include several black-screen errors, bugs with Radeon Software, its various game optimization, recording, and streaming features, and more. Version 20.2.2 WHQL otherwise has an identical change-log to the 20.2.2 beta.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.2.2 WHQL

The change-log is identical to 20.2.2 beta.

In Win today rolled out the SR24, an all-in-one liquid CPU cooler featuring a patented "twin turbine pump" feature. These are basically two pump turbines attached on both ends of the DC motor's shaft, which in turn are located on either ends of the CPU block. One of the turbine pushes coolant into the block, while the other pulls heated coolant from it. In Win claims that even if one of the two fails over time, the other will provide sufficient coolant pressure to cool your CPU, while a warning LED lights up. With both turbines operational, the SR24 offers double the coolant pressure, and a markedly superior P-Q curve. The pump block is capped off with an RGB illuminated In Win logo.

The innovative pump-block of the In Win SR24 is tubed to a 240 mm x 120 mm aluminium radiator. Ventilating it are a pair of included In Win Jupiter 120 mm fans that each spin at speeds of 500 to 2,500 RPM, with up to 101.5 CFM of air-flow, and as low as 23 dBA of noise output. The fans feature double ball bearings and feature addressable RGB LEDs in their hubs. A single 3-pin ARGB connection handles lighting for the two fans and the pump-block. The company didn't mention thermal load numbers, but among the CPU socket types supported are TR4, sTRX4, LGA2066, AM4, and LGA115x. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Valve's Index VR headset is expected to go back on sale on Monday, March 9th, when Valve will again re-fill its stock of Index VR headsets, according to Engadget. Just in time for the Half-Life: Alyx launch, Valve has decided to supply all of the gamers with a stock of the headsets so everyone can experience the new Half-Life game with Valve's Index VR. Considering that Half-Life: Alyx is dropping on March 23rd, Valve thought of everyone in need of a new VR headset and decided to offer it on Monday. Valve is expecting the headset to sell out completely, so its best to be early if you want to get one too, for $999. The sale will begin at 1PM eastern time.

TechPowerUp and Montech welcomed Spring with a Mega Giveaway, giving eighteen lucky winners a chance to give their battlestations a sweet new beginning. Up for grabs were three sets of Montech's premium Air 900 Mesh Black cases + Z3 ARGB fans + ML900 mouse-mats; five Fighter 400 mid-tower cases, and ten ML900. These represent Montech's strong entry to the PC hardware space with several new cases and gaming peripherals under development. Without further ado, the winners:

• First Prizes (Air 900 Mesh Black cases + Z3 ARGB fans + ML900 mouse-mats): Michael from North Carolina, Mike from the US, and Braxston from New York.
• Second Prizes (Fighter 400 cases): Justin from the US, Matthew from Massachusetts, Jorell from Nevada, Jeremy from Michigan, and Mark from California
• Third Prizes (ML900 mouse-mats): Kenneth from Colorado, Leonard from Colorado, Jacob from Virginia, Justin from Florida, Jack from New York, Colin from Wisconsin, Rodney from Virginia, Aaron from Utah, Michael from West Virginia, and John from Florida

A Huge Congrats for all 18 of you! TechPowerUp and Montech will return with more such interesting giveaways!

UNISOC, a leading global supplier of mobile communication and IoT chipsets, today officially launched its new-generation 5G SoC mobile platform - T7520. Using cutting-edge process technology, T7520 enables an optimized 5G experience with substantially enhanced AI computing and multimedia imaging processing capabilities while lowering power consumption.

T7520 is UNISOC's second-generation 5G smartphone platform. Built on a 6 nm EUV process technology and empowered by some of the latest design techniques, it offers substantially enhanced performance at a lower level of power consumption than ever.

Western Digital is enabling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to easily transition to NVMe storage and dramatically improve application performance with a new addition to its portfolio of data center NVMe SSDs: the first enterprise-class NVMe SSD in the WD Gold family. Industry analyst firm IDC expects NVMe unit shipments to reach more than 79 percent of the market by 2023. With advancements in multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs, legacy storage technology has become a bottleneck to maximum application performance.

Shipping in early cQ2 2020, the new WD Gold NVMe SSDs will be available in four capacities to channel partners and end customers. The WD Gold NVMe SSD is designed to be the primary storage in servers delivering superior response times, higher throughput and greater scale than existing SATA devices for enterprise applications. WD Gold NVMe SSDs complement recently launched WD Gold HDDs by providing a high-performance storage tier for applications and data sets that requires low latency or high throughput.

Late last week, Intel released a public beta of its own low-'cost' game capture and streaming feature that's part of Intel Graphics Command Center (IGCC) application that's distributed through Microsoft Store. At the time, Intel claimed that those gaming on Intel Graphics can yet record or stream their games with negligible performance impact. We now have a couple of under the hood details on how this feature works. The Game Capture and Streaming feature lets people record their gameplay or stream it to popular social networks such as Twitch, YouTube, etc.

Intel's game capture and streaming feature leverages the VDEnc hardware AVC encoder featured in the company's Gen9 (and later) iGPUs, found on "Skylake" (or later) microarchitectures. At default quality settings, the feature only needs VDEnc, and hence offers practically zero iGPU performance impact when rendering 3D. At higher quality settings by the user, however, the feature switches to a dual-pipe encoder that taps into the compute power of the iGPU's execution units (EUs). These hence come with a performance impact on the iGPU when rendering 3D. We've also learned that IGCC game capture tech does not leverage discrete GPUs of other brands.

AMD has been on a roll in both consumer, professional, and exascale computing environments, and it has just snagged itself another hugely important contract. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has just announced the winners for their next-gen, exascale supercomputer that aims to be the world's fastest. Dubbed "El Capitan", the new supercomputer will be powered by AMD's next-gen EPYC Genoa processors (Zen 4 architecture) and Radeon GPUs. This is the first such exascale contract where AMD is the sole purveyor of both CPUs and GPUs, with AMD's other design win with EPYC in the Cray Shasta being paired with NVIDIA graphics cards.

El Capitan will be a $600 million investment to be deployed in late 2022 and operational in 2023. Undoubtedly, next-gen proposals from AMD, Intel and NVIDIA were presented, with AMD winning the shootout in a big way. While initially the DOE projected El Capitan to provide some 1.5 exaflops of computing power, it has now revised their performance goals to a pure 2 exaflop machine. El Capitan willl thus be ten times faster than the current leader of the supercomputing world, Summit.

Well, folks, if you've had your GPU happily cycling through computations for Berkeley SETI Research Center's Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence program, you can start counting the watts you'll now be saving. In a post on the SETI@Home page, the researchers explained the reason they'll be politely refusing any additional computations: one, that they're already hitting the point of diminishing returns on computational uptime and have already analyzed all the required data; two, that they require all hands on deck to actually peruse the already gathered data for work on research papers, instead of hard at work managing the distributed processing of data.

SETI@Home recommends users to attach their freely given computing power to another BOINC-based project, but I'd say there is no need to ask that: people who contribute to distributed computing projects such as these always want to do all their can for us all. Kudos to all of you who added your PC hardware to this project. Now, it's time to find a new home - and might I suggest Folding@Home's new project to thwart the current Coronavirus scourge? And also, remember to make use of the TechPowerUp! team ID with Folding@Home (id 50711). If you want to take part in our folding community, feel free to hit up our forums.PS: No wording on whether aliens have been found, so we'll all have to wait for these actual research papers to come out.

(Update, March 4th: Another NVIDIA graphics card has been discovered in the Geekbench database, this one featuring a total of 124 CUs. This could amount to some 7,936 CUDA cores, should NVIDIA keep the same 64 CUDA cores per CU - though this has changed in the past, as when NVIDIA halved the number of CUDA cores per CU from Pascal to Turing. The 124 CU graphics card is clocked at 1.1 GHz and features 32 GB of HBM2e, delivering a score of 222,377 points in the Geekbench benchmark. We again stress that these can be just engineering samples, with conservative clocks, and that final performance could be even higher).

NVIDIA is expected to launch its next-generation Ampere lineup of GPUs during the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) event happening from March 22nd to March 26th. Just a few weeks before the release of these new GPUs, a Geekbench 5 compute score measuring OpenCL performance of the unknown GPUs, which we assume are a part of the Ampere lineup, has appeared. Thanks to the twitter user "_rogame" (@_rogame) who obtained a Geekbench database entry, we have some information about the CUDA core configuration, memory, and performance of the upcoming cards.

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia-based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, makes another push into the HEDT market by releasing the world's first Socket sTRX4 based monoblock made for made for the ROG Zenith II Extreme motherboard. This is a complete all-in-one (CPU and motherboard) liquid cooling solution for the ASUS motherboard that is based on AMD TRX40 chipset for AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors. This monoblock is compatible with the ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme motherboard.

Designed and engineered in cooperation with ASUS, this monoblock uses Velocity sTR4 cooling engine to ensure the proper cooling of the large IHS that hides the spread-out chiplets. This water block directly cools AMD sTR4X type CPU, as well as the voltage regulation module (VRM). This kind of efficient VRM cooling on a TRX40 platform opens up even greater overclocking capabilities. Using a monoblock gets rid of the small fans that can be found on these TRX40 motherboards, hidden under the VRM heatsink grill.

Bitspower today rolled out the Touchaqua Notos 120 fans. Available in single-piece, 3-piece, and 5-piece packs, the fans are optimized for ventilating radiators. These 120 mm fans spin between 800 to 1,800 RPM, with a noise output ranging between 25-28 dBA. The company didn't mention air-flow specs or bearing type, but rates these fans with a 30,000-hour operational lifetime. The frames feature rubberized vibration-dampeners, while the LEDs are located in the hub. The fans take in 4-pin PWM for their prime function, and 3-pin ARGB for the lighting.

The single-unit packs include just the fan, while 3-piece and 5-piece packs include fan-controllers and LED lighting hubs. The BPTA-DRGBMFC lighting controller included with the 3-piece and 5-piece packs takes in a single 3-pin ARGB and SATA power connection, and puts out eight 3-pin headers, with SMD buttons that let you cycle through presets. The BPTA-PFANMFH fan-controller module included with the 3-piece and 5-piece packs splits a single PWM signal among 10 downstream 4-pin PWM headers. It draws power from a SATA power connector. The single-piece, 3-piece, and 5-piece packs of the Bitspower Touchaqua Notos 120 are priced at NTD 310, 1,240, and 2,170, respectively.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced the availability of DC1000M, a new U.2 data center NVMe PCIe SSD. DC1000M is designed to support a wide range of data-intensive enterprise workloads, including Cloud computing, web hosting, high-performance computing (HPC), virtual infrastructures, artificial intelligence and deep learning applications. DC1000M joins the recently released DC1000B NVMe boot drive, the VMware Ready DC500 series SATA SSDs and DC450R to form the most complete range of superior enterprise-class data center storage solutions in the market.

"Mission critical services and Cloud-based applications depend not only on lightning-fast IOPS and bandwidth, but also on the consistency and predictability of the data being serviced," said Keith Schimmenti, enterprise SSD business manager, Kingston. "DC1000M provides the stability and low latency for the evolving data center, while powering the workloads that require one drive write per day (1 DWPD) endurance."

Ampere Computing, a startup focusing on making HPC and processors from cloud applications based on Arm Instruction Set Architecture, today announced the release of a first 80 core "cloud-native" processor based on the Arm ISA. The new Ampere Altra CPU is the company's first 80 core CPU meant for hyper scalers like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Being built on TSMC's 7 nm semiconductor manufacturing process, the Altra is a CPU that is utilizing a monolithic die to achieve maximum performance. Using Arm's v8.2+ instruction set, the CPU is using the Neoverse N1 platform as its core, to be ready for any data center workload needed. It also borrows a few security features from v8.3 and v8.5, namely the hardware mitigations of speculative attacks.

When it comes to the core itself, the CPU is running at 3.0 GHz frequency and has some very interesting specifications. The design of the core is such that it is 4-wide superscalar Out of Order Execution (OoOE), which Ampere refers to as "aggressive" meaning that there is a lot of data throughput going on. The cache levels are structured in a way that there is 64 KB of L1D and L1I cache per core, along with 1 MB of L2 cache per core as well. For system-level cache, there is 32 MB of L3 available to the SoC. All of the caches have Error-correcting code (ECC) built-in, giving the CPU a much-needed feature. There are two 128-bit wide Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) units, which are there to do parallel processing if needed. There is no mention if they implement Arm's Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE) or not.

Way back in Computex 2019, Seasonic showed us the Connect, a concept PC power-supply that greatly de-clutters your build's power cabling spaghetti by introducing the Connect device. This is essentially a power connector spinal back-plane that runs along the height of your tower, with shorter cables emerging from it. The company announced the product's market release with a 750-Watt model, the SSR-750FA. The contraption connects to the main unit through fewer, high-gauge cables.

The business-end of the Seasonic Connect SSR-750FA is a slightly modified Prime 750 W, which is just 14 cm long, and has just the high-gauge cable emerging from it, which leads to the Connect module. Under the hood, the Prime 750 W offers single +12V rail design, 80 Plus Gold efficiency, DC to DC switching, most common electrical protection mechanisms, and a 135 mm fluid dynamic bearing fan to keep cool. Downstream connectivity of the SSR-750FA include a 24-pin ATX, two 4+4 pin EPS, four 6+2 pin PCIe power, 8-10 SATA power, and up to three 4-pin Molex. Seasonic is backing this PSU with a 10-year warranty.

Google announced cancellation of the 2020 edition of Google I/O, the company's largest annual expo and trade-show. The announcement comes in light of the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak that is now quantitatively affecting all regions of the world. Google I/O was originally scheduled for May 12-14, held on Google's home turf of Mountain View, California. Google I/O is an annual gathering of software- and web developers, and consumer electronics manufacturers from within Google's various ecosystems, such as Android. Paying attendees will be given the option to get a full refund, or an option to buy a ticket to the 2021 edition of Google I/O.

Introducing the EVGA B5 power supplies, the latest power supplies to carry on the EVGA tradition of reliability, performance, and affordability. Here are 5 Facts about the new flagship for EVGA 80 PLUS Certified Bronze power supplies. The B5 power supplies provide maximum flexibility for system builders with a fully modular design and a small chassis across all models. At 150 mm length, the B5 power supplies provide solid, affordable power for all manner of system builds and cases.

Next, the B5 power supplies feature one of the most important standards for reliability - Japanese capacitors. Featuring 100% Japanese capacitors on the 850 W and 750 W models, the B5 power supplies will provide a safe and reliable power for years to come. (650 W B5 and 550 W B5 models use a Japanese main capacitor.) The ultra-quiet 135 mm FDB fan becomes silent when coupled with EVGA ECO mode to turn off the fan in low to medium loads. The larger fan and carefully tuned profile creates a quieter experience than the B3 power supplies.

Intel has decided to restart operations in its previously winded-down Costa Rica facilities. An Intel Product Change Notification (PCN) for their Cascade Lake Xeon Scalable processors shows that the company has added Costa Rica to its three other "Test and Finish" sites - the other three are located in Penang (Malaysia), Kulim (Malaysia) and Vietnam. Intel's aim is to guarantee a "continuous supply" of the affected processors - namely, Cascade Lake second-generation Xeon Scalable processors in the Silver, Gold and Platinum lines (in both boxed and tray SKUs).

This move, which will be done in phases. The first implementation of the Costa Rica operations will be effective on April 19th, with the remaining operations to come online on August 3rd. Intel expects to reduce dependency on their other three Test and Finish sites, while being able to bolster final production capacity by some 25% with this move.

Expreview has caught the sighting of an apparently upcoming AMD graphics card based around the RX 590 SKU. The new revision, being named the RX 590 GME, apparently features lower clocks than the base Polaris 30 RX 590 ~around 1,385 MHz boost compared to the vanilla RX590's 1545 MHz. That clockspeed puts the RX 590 GME slightly above the RX 580 in terms of specs, but way below the RX 590, which should lead to a distinct performance variation between the two.

It's unclear as to what GPU die this new Polaris-based graphics card will be using. If I were a betting man, I'd say these are being harvested from 12 nm Polaris 30 dies that haven't been able to sustain the 1545 MHz clockspeeds rated for RX 590 chips - but still being put to use and very likely with a better power/performance ratio than the RX 590. For now, the model is only available for pre-order through a Chinese e-tailer, which could mean this is a China-only release.

Available for pre-order today, Everest is a fully customizable, mechanical gaming keyboard that is a revolution in choice. Brought to you by Mountain, Everest can be pre-ordered here, from 95€ ($90 / £85 - depending on exchange rate). The Everest keyboard is available as the Core Version in TKL format and MAX version featuring the removable numpad and media dock.

Mountain's design philosophy is built on four pillars: Innovation, Performance, Aesthetics and Modularity. The Everest keyboard includes patent-pending features, designed from the ground up. Integrated display keys can be assigned to any game or application for a faster launch, the modular media dock with circular display dial provides unprecedented levels of control and allows you to monitor your system. The magnetic removable numpad and magnetic feet allow multiple levels of height adjustment for ease of use. The Everest keyboard is built to the highest standard - created from double-plated aluminium, combined with CNC-milling for added aesthetics.Back the Mountain Everest project on Kickstarter here.

LIAN LI Industrial Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of aluminium chassis and PC accessories, is proud to announce the STRIMER PLUS, the next generation of RGB extension cables in 24-pin and 8-pin format. The new STRIMER PLUS has up to 120 LEDs for brighter and more complex light effects. With a cleaner look and an improved installation process, adding an extra layer of stylish and unique flair to a PC has never been easier.

The STRIMER PLUS brings next level brightness, light configurations, and flexibility. With a total of 120 and 108 LEDs (24-pin and 8-Pin respectively), the STRIMER PLUS presents an unprecedented level of brightness in 7 colors and 18 light modes all manageable via a controller, or synchronized with the motherboard RGB control software for a unified lighting effect. By combining speed, colors and modes, the STRIMER PLUS offers a total of 84 individual lighting effects, making it the one and only RGB product needed to enhance and personalize any PC.

Alleged pictures of the upcoming Intel Core i9-10900K and i7-10700K processors made it to Chinese social media. The blurry-cam pictures of the chips' topside don't reveal much other than the "Intel Confidential" markings, denoting that these chips are engineering samples. The reverse side confirm that these are chips are built in the new LGA1200 package. You can also spot electrical ancillaries laid out unlike any previous-gen Intel package, and different socket key notches.

In the run up to the rumored April 2020 launch we could learn more about these chips. Based on the 14 nm "Comet Lake" silicon, Intel's 10th generation Core desktop processors in the LGA1200 package increase logical processor counts across the board, and increase clock speeds. The i9-10900K is a 10-core/20-thread processor with 20 MB of shared L3 cache, and up to 5.10 GHz boost frequency, with 4.80 GHz all-core boost. The i7-10700K, on the other hand, is an 8-core/16-thread chip with 16 MB L3 cache, and clock speeds of 5.00 GHz boost and 4.50 GHz all-core Turbo. The Core i5 series also gets a shot in the arm, being configured as 6-core/12-thread, with 12 MB of L3 cache. The per-core performance (IPC) is expected to be the same as 6th generation "Skylake."

Marvell today announced OCTEON TX2, the latest family of infrastructure processors targeting a wide variety of wired and wireless networking equipment including switches, routers, secure gateways, firewall, network monitoring, 5G base stations, and smart network interface controllers (NICs). Massive increases in data traffic coupled with escalating requirements for end-to-end security are intensifying the need for highly scalable compute platforms with integrated workload-optimized hardware accelerators to meet performance, power and total cost of ownership requirements. Building on five generations of the industry's most scalable and widely adopted infrastructure processor platform, the OCTEON TX2 family is enabled by a broad software ecosystem including a feature-rich software development kit (SDK) and virtualization support, delivering a unique combination of performance and programmability. The OCTEON TX2 portfolio extends Marvell's industry-leading performance and scalability, delivering a 2.5x improvement over the previous generation and scaling up to 200 Gbps of packet processing throughput.

Xerox is "aggressively pursuing" acquisition on PC giant HP by buying out all its public shareholding at $24 per share, according to a formal tender offer. HP has repeatedly refused to be acquired on Xerox's terms, and so Xerox is proposing to replace HP's entire board of directors with an independent board that it hopes will see the value of its offer. "Our proposal offers progress over entrenchment," Xerox CEO John Visentin states. "HP shareholders will receive $27 billion in immediate, upfront cash while retaining significant, long-term upside through equity ownership in a combined company with greater free cash flow to invest in growth and return to shareholders." Xerox claims to have secured financing of $24 billion from a consortium of financial institutions to help its efforts. Did Xerox just invent something as groundbreaking as the mouse?Many Thanks to biffzinker for the tip.

Apple late last week agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of slowing down iPhones without the knowledge or consent of users, motivating them to upgrade their devices or batteries. The settlement amount is marked at USD $500 million or $25 per member of the class (which could be adjusted depending on how many iPhones from the class are found eligible). The lawsuit is being heard by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, and its settlement offer by Apple is subject to his approval.

In the settlement offer papers by Apple, the company reportedly denies wrongdoing, and seeks to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation. Eligible members of the class are U.S. owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus or SE that ran the iOS 10.2.1 or later operating system. It also covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017. Initial outcry after discovery of Apple's secret CPU throttling cause the company to apologize for the practice, promise transparency in the future, and introduce the "Battery Health" feature in iOS that informs users of the decay of their device's lithium ion battery (ability to hold charge), and give performance throttling control to end-users.

TSMC today announced it has collaborated with Broadcom on enhancing the Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS ) platform to support the industry's first and largest 2X reticle size interposer. With an area of approximately 1,700mm2, this next generation CoWoS interposer technology significantly boosts computing power for advanced HPC systems by supporting more SoCs as well as being ready to support TSMC's next-generation five-nanometer (N5) process technology.

This new generation CoWoS technology can accommodate multiple logic system-on-chip (SoC) dies, and up to 6 cubes of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), offering as much as 96 GB of memory. It also provides bandwidth of up to 2.7 terabytes per second, 2.7 times faster than TSMC's previously offered CoWoS solution in 2016. With higher memory capacity and bandwidth, this CoWoS solution is well-suited for memory-intensive workloads such as deep learning, as well as workloads for 5G networking, power-efficient datacenters, and more. In addition to offering additional area to increase compute, I/O, and HBM integration, this enhanced CoWoS technology provides greater design flexibility and yield for complex ASIC designs in advanced process nodes.

EIZO Corporation today announced the release of the ColorEdge PROMINENCE CG3146, a 31.1-inch, DCI-4K (4096 x 2160) HDR (high dynamic range) reference monitor for the professional post production and color grading workflow. It is the successor model to EIZO's flagship HDR reference monitor, the ColorEdge PROMINENCE CG3145, and is the first to incorporate a built-in calibration sensor.

Like its predecessor, the ColorEdge PROMINENCE CG3146 correctly shows both very bright and very dark areas on the screen without sacrificing the integrity of either - a process which cannot be achieved with SDR (standard dynamic range) monitors. The monitor achieves 1000 cd/m^2 (typical) high brightness and 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio for true HDR display.

FSP, the world leading manufacturer of PC power supplies, is delighted to announce its new stylishly innovative T-WINGS (CMT710) PC chassis. The new T-WINGS chassis offers users the ability to combine two high-end PC systems into a single chassis. By housing two high-end systems into a single chassis, the T-WINGS save users space at home or in the office and can greatly speed up productivity. The main system supports up to EATX motherboard sizes for extreme gaming workstations and HEDT systems, while the sub-system supports Mini-ITX motherboards that offers a wide range of capabilities.

The benefits of this design include running two systems simultaneously, which frees up the systems from any lags, delays, or any excess loads that might cause system crashes. Content creators and streamers will benefit from this setup, which will allow them to record without interruptions, continually monitor and control the status of their recordings, and allow them to interact with their fans with ease.

zAnother day, another audio product quick look. This time, the folks over at Philips get some love with the US launch of their PH805 active noise cancelling (ANC) headphones, the news of which we covered before. The company has gone through big changes over the years, and one of the effects has been regional business units operating independently enough to have separate launch windows for products. Take this very product, for example, which had been out for purchase for a couple of months already last year in Europe and parts of Asia, and Philips USA only just got it in 2020. Somehow, we had no coverage on this to date, but that changes now.

The PH805, also referred to as the PH805BK or TAPH805BK, follows a trend of product names that make little sense, but all you need to know is that this is from the same company and team that brought out the excellent Fidelio series that offered great value for money to those wanting an open-back, over-ear headphones with a neutral signature without any real shortcomings across the frequency range. They are readying the new Fidelio x3 for launch soon, but the PH805 aims to interest a different segment entirely. In particular, the frequent traveler or mobile user that wants a lightweight set of cans with ANC and wireless connectivity. It ships in a retail packaging that is well designed, with the company and product name on the front along with a large render and marketing features throughout, with a clear note on Google Assistant compatibility. Sorry, iOS users! Read past the break for more on the Philips PH805BK, including an unboxing, user experience, and what it costs to get you one of these in the USA.

NVIDIA today announced that their yearly GPU Technology Conference (GTC) will be held online, instead of locally at the San Jose Convention Center as previously planned. The company cites Covid-19 (colloquially called Coronavirus) concerns as the root cause - the health of both its professionals and attendees is paramount for the company, and as such, an online event seems more inline with the state of the world.

In the press note, NVIDIA also said that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will still deliver a keynote address, which will be available exclusively by livestream. All those who registered for a GTC pass will receive a full refund. This is yet another event that has been impacted by the recent virus outbreak that has the world's economies teetering, but for the more cynical among us, it could be the beginning of a new way of doing this sorts of events: online, rather than locally, thus reducing the required investment and logistics usually associated with such.

You may never have heard of Bauhütte before, but they're a Japanese company specializing on gaming-geared furniture. Think chairs, desks and around-desk accessories, as well as a "cosplay suitcase"... Whatever that is. Now I don't know about you, but I think Bauhütte could and should think higher. And I can think of nothing that screams "gamer" more than a fully integrated gaming bed. They've actually done it.

"It's really just a twin bed with shelves and a beanie", you might say, but I think that there is actual thought behind this product. For one, the fact that it's a twin bed shows an extremely nuanced thought from the company - as in, "if you're getting this product, you're likely single anyway, so why waste the space on something you won't ever be able to change?". There are some shelves for your hydrating options and choice of snacks, and there's even a beanie that you can deploy to give you that sweet, 45º upright position that's great at avoiding some drainage issues involving the act of drinking and your windpipe. never mind the fact that the keyboard is shown at a 90º angle relative to the user: there's a tablet support on there so you need do nothing more than move your eyes towards your desired content, whatever that may be.

Death Stranding, one of 2019's gaming masterpieces (or the world's most beautiful walking simulator, depending on who you ask) has been confirmed to drop on the PC platform as early as June 2nd. The new brainchild from famed Hideo Kojima has been well received by critics (at 82 Metacritic score) but not so much by users (at 6.6 average user score on the same platform). A very interesting part to this story, in my view, is that this is the shortest time-span that has elapsed between a games' publication as a PlayStation Exclusive (November 8th 2019) and its subsequent PC release.

Alongside the release date confirmation, Kojima Productions has released a new game trailer for the PC platform (you can catch it after the break). Support for ultrawide resolutions has already been confirmed, and there will also be a photomode and additional content based on Valve's Half Life franchise. The game is now available for pre-purchase through Steam.

iiyama today announced a new addition to their monitor lineup in the form of the ProLite X4372UHSU. For straters, let me tell you straight from the bat that this monitor doesn't tick many gaming boxes. The 4K resolution is its most appealing feature (and even then, most users would say that a 2560 x 1440 resolution is currently best for gaming with all but the most expensive graphics card solutions). The IPs panel comes in as a close second, though that is typically marred with slower response times - quoted at 4 ms in the announcement.

Other features include a 60 Hz framerate, which is expected given the 4K resolution. Typical brightness stands at a respectable (if nothing to write home about) 450 cd/m², and contrast is quoted at 1300:1. HDR support is therefore present, though no mention of a VESA certification (available at 400 cd/m² brightness). Connectivity-wise, the monitor features 2x HDMI, 2x DisplayPort and 4x USB (2x 3.0 and 2x 2.0) connectors. A bevvy of technologies (Flicker Free, Blue Light Reducer, HDR, PbP (Picture-by-Picture), headphone hook and remote control) aim to make the display more usable with some quality of life features, and the inclusion of 2x 9 W speakers can be a bonus for some (and will for most work environments). The iiyama ProLite X4372UHSU is available at around €490.

HyperX, the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., today announced the release of the HyperX Alloy Origins and Alloy Origins Core gaming keyboards. The Alloy Origins and Alloy Origins Core mechanical keyboards feature the new tactile HyperX Aqua mechanical switches built for performance and longevity with an 80 million click rating. Both keyboards include RGB exposed backlit keys for brighter illumination with radiant lighting effects and five adjustable brightness levels. The Alloy Origins keyboard is available now and the tenkeyless Alloy Origins Core is available for pre-order.

The Alloy Origins and Alloy Origins Core gaming keyboards include an aluminium body with an aircraft-grade brushed finished for durability and stability, plus a space-saving layout to maximize desktop real estate for mouse movement. The Alloy Origins Core tenkeyless gaming keyboard is geared for users seeking a compact form factor and more room for mouse movements. Both keyboards are supported by HyperX NGENUITY software with advanced customization features for lighting, macros and customable per-key lighting effects. The USB Type-C to USB Type-A keyboard cable is also detachable on both designs.

ID-Cooling today updated its Zoomflow line of all-in-one liquid CPU cooler series with the new Zoomflow 360X Snow. As with most PC hardware names that use the term "snow," the 360X Snow is a white trim of the Zoomflow 360. White dominates the pump-block's body, the nylon sleeve around the tubing, the radiator (including its fins), and the three included fans. ID-Cooling claims the cooler is capable of handling thermal loads of up to 350 W thanks to its high coolant pressure and large 360 mm x 120 mm radiator.

The three included 120 mm hydraulic-bearing fans each spin at speeds ranging between 700 to 1,500 RPM, pushing up to 62 CFM of air, with noise output ranging between 18 to 26.4 dBA. A single 3-pin ARGB connection from the motherboard lights up the three fans and the RGB ornament on the pump-block. Among the CPU socket types supported are AMD TR4, sTRX4, and AM4; and Intel LGA2066 and LGA115x. The company didn't reveal pricing, although we expect it to be priced around the $130-mark.

Chiplet design of processors is getting more popular due to many improvements and opportunities it offers. Some of the benefits include lower costs as the dies are smaller compared to one monolithic design, while you are theoretically able to stitch as much of the chiplets together as possible. During the ISSCC 2020 conference, CEA-Leti, a French research institute, created a 96 core CPU made from six 3D stacked 16 core chiplets. The chip is created as a demonstration of what this modular approach offers and what are the capabilities of the chiplet-based CPU design.

The chiplets are manufactured on the 28 nm FD-SOI manufacturing process from STMicroelectronics, while the active interposer die below them that is connecting everything is made using the 65 nm process. Each one of the six dies is housing 16 cores based on MIPS Instruction Set Architecture core. Each chiplet is split into four 4-core clusters that make up for a total of 16 cores per chiplet. When it comes to the core itself, it is a scalar MIPS32v1 core equipped with 16 KiB of L1 instruction and an L1 data cache. For L2 cache, there is 256 KiB per cluster, while the L3 cache is split into four 1 MiB tiles for the whole cluster. The chiplets are stacked on top of an active interposer which connects the chiplets and provides external I/O support.

SeaSonic late last week launched three new fanless PSUs under the Prime Fanless series. The company expanded its Prime Fanless TX line of 80 Plus Titanium-certified power supplies with a new 700 W model, the Prime Fanless TX-700. This tops the series which has been led by a 600-Watt model since its debut back in 2017. The TX-700 offers full modular cabling, well over 95% efficiency with 230 VAC input, micro-tolerance load regulation (MTLR), APFC, most common electrical protections, and connectivity that include two 8-pin EPS, four 6+2 pin PCIe, and twelve SATA power connectors.

Next up, SeaSonic expanded its Prime Fanless PX line of 80 Plus Platinum certified PSUs with new 500 W and 450 W models. You get largely the same electrical feature-set as the Fanless TX series, but with around 93% efficiency at 230 VAC. You still get two 8-pin EPS connectors, but only up to two 6+2 pin PCIe power, and eight SATA power. SeaSonic is backing both its Prime Fanless TX and PX lines with an industry-leading 12-year product warranty that's probably supported by the fact that these PSUs have no moving parts.

Super Flower is a leading manufacturer of high-performance power supply products. Specialize and focusing on developing high-end products for the PSU market. Acting as a pioneer of launching 2000 W platinum flagship PSU in 2015, the product itself still holds the throne of the highest wattage can be found in the PSU market.

Having the innovative, advance technology and exclusive patents, Super Flower will continue to come up with high-performance PSU series to serve worldwide consumers, especially North America. In order to provide direct and comprehensive services, Super Flower announces entering North America PSU market by offering unique patent technology Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium series with aggressive price for consumers with better choices.