Compulab has taken to Kickstarter as a way to subsidize the development and production of its Airtop2 Inferno Mini-PC. This aims to be a be-all, end-all Mini-PC that enables high-quality gaming in a fanless, noiseless design. Its insides are positively bursting with top notch hardware: it'll be powered by an Intel i7-7700K (95 W TDP) and the desktop version of Nvidia's GTX 1080 (180 W TDP). If it ever begins actual production, that is; nothing against Compulab, but Kickstarter itself seems to have one too many of these cases popping out.

Compulab's solutions use their metal side panels as "immense" radiators to dissipate the heat buildup inside the chassis. A number of heatpipes and air channels are built into these side panels' structure, so as to allow for better heat dissipation and usage of natural warm air convection. Besides the top of the line CPU and GPU, the Airtop2 Inferno packs a C236 chipset motherboard (a Z170 equivalent). It's possible to install up to 4x DIMMs, 4x 2.5" HDD or SSD solutions, and 2x NVMe SSDs.

With the rather fast introduction of the Intel Core i7-8700K (just 9 months following the January 3rd launch of the i7-7700K), retailers are finding themselves with quite a bit of unsold i7-7700K (and even i7-6700K) inventory. Consumers are drawn to either the i7-8700K, or the competing AMD Ryzen processors. To help the market digest these unsold chips, Intel started a new game-bundle dubbed "Game Without Compromise."

Buyers of brand-new Core i7-7700K and i7-6700K processors will receive game keys to "Total War: Warhammer II" and "Assassins Creed: Origins," which is effectively a $100 value-addition to these $330 quad-core chips. It provides an upgrade path to users of the older 100-series/200-series chipset platform. As with most such game bundles, the "Game Without Compromise" bundle will be limited to select retailers.

Processor sales numbers of leading German retailer Mindfactory.de show AMD Ryzen processors to be outselling Intel processors for the first time in over a decade. German and EU DIY PC buyers seem to have developed a taste for AMD Ryzen processors, which is reflecting in Mindfactory's sales figures. Since March 2017, when AMD launched its Ryzen 7 series, AMD processor sales have seen a steady growth from 28% (vs. 72% of Intel), to a stunning 56% by the end of August 2017. Mindfactory's sales is a test case of AMD's growth in the DIY processor market, which forced Intel to rush in its Core X family, and its 8th generation Core processor family, which could be out in Q3-2017.

Ryzen 5 1600 appears to be the most popular AMD choice among Mindfactory's customers, as the 6-core/12-thread processor strikes a price-performance sweet-spot at 198€. The chip is outselling the similarly-priced Core i5-7500 by two times, and the i5-7600K by three times. The 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 1700 is the second most popular AMD Ryzen part, priced at 288€. From the Intel camp, the Core i7-7700K still commands the single biggest chunk of Mindfactory's CPU sales. As expected, the Ryzen 7 1700X outsells the 1800X by five times. Also, the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X is outselling the Core i9-7900X by over three times. Find more interesting data in the beautifully drawn graphs by Redditor "Type-21."

LinusTechTips has received an Alienware Area 51, the boutique system which Alienware has developed through its exclusive partnership with AMD for the 16-core, 32-thread Threadripper CPUs.

The system was tested using a proprietary Dell/Alienware motherboard, as well as 32 GB (4x 8 GB) of 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM. Graphics were handled by a Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti, and storage was etched on a SanDisk A400 256 GB NVME drive (Up to 2050/700 MB/s Sequential Read/Write). The nature of the benchmarked systems, with their myriad of hardware parts, means that the benchmarks are not 100% representative of CPU performance deltas between the tested processors; however, they do put out some interesting numbers. The other HEDT system to be tested was an Intel-based X299 system with a stock Intel Core i9-7900X (10 cores, 20 threads) on an ASUS Prime X299 Deluxe, 4x 8 GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, the same GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, and a 512 GB Samsung 950 Pro NVME SSD.

TweakTown has put forth an article wherein they claim to have received info from industry insiders regarding the upcoming Vega 56's performance. Remember that Vega 56 is the slightly cut-down version of the flagship Vega 64, counting with 56 next-generation compute units (NGCUs) instead of Vega 64's, well, 64. This means that while the Vega 64 has the full complement of 4,096 Stream processors, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 2048-bit wide 8 GB HBM2 memory pool offering 484 GB/s of bandwidth, Vega 56 makes do with 3,548 Stream processors,192 TMUs, 64 ROPs, the same 8 GB of HBM2 memory and a slightly lower memory bandwidth at 410 GB/s.

The Vega 56 has been announced to retail for about $399, or $499 with one of AMD's new (famous or infamous, depends on your mileage) Radeon Packs. The RX Vega 56 card was running on a system configured with an Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.2GHz, 16 GB of DDR4-3000 MHz RAM, and Windows 10 at 2560 x 1440 resolution.

Intel announced retail availability of its new Core X-series HEDT (high-end desktop) processors in the LGA2066 package, designed for motherboards based on the Intel X299 Express chipset. These include the 4-core/4-thread Core i5-7640X and 4-core/8-thread Core i7-7740X based on the "Kaby Lake-X" silicon; and 6-core/12-thread Core i7-7800X, 8-core/16-thread Core i7-7820X, and 10-core/20-thread Core i9-7900X chips based on the "Skylake-X" silicon. Compatible socket LGA2066 motherboards based on the X299 chipset began selling, too.

The Core i5-7640X features 4.00 GHz clocks with 4.20 GHz Turbo Boost, and 6 MB of L3 cache. The i7-7740X tops that with 4.30 GHz core and 4.50 GHz Turbo Boost out of the box, 8 MB of L3 cache, and HyperThreading. Both these chips feature just dual-channel DDR4 memory controller, meaning that you'll be able to use just four out of eight DIMM slots in most LGA2066 motherboards. The i5-7640X is priced at USD $242, while the i7-7740X goes for $339. These are the same prices at which you can buy the LGA1151 Core i5-7600K and i7-7700K, respectively, so an attempt is being made to transition all PC enthusiasts over to the HEDT platform.

AMD recently cut the price of its current flagship desktop processor Ryzen 7 1800X from its USD $499 launch price to $469. At the time, it left prices of the Ryzen 7 1700 and Ryzen 7 1700X untouched. It looks like the two received small price-cuts as well. The Ryzen 7 1700X is now priced at $349 in leading online stores, down from its launch price of $399. The Ryzen 7 1700 (non-X), on the other hand, is now selling for $319, down from its launch price of $329. The two cuts may seem minor, but could help AMD turn up the heat against Intel's Core i7-7700K and its upcoming "Kaby Lake-X" Core i7-7740X and i5-7640X.

Based on the 14 nm "Summit Ridge" silicon, the Ryzen 7 1700 and 1700X are eight-core processors. The 1700 ships with clock speeds of 3.00 GHz, with 3.70 GHz boost, while the 1700X ships with higher 3.40 GHz clocks, with 3.80 GHz boost, and XFR, which adds a further 200 MHz to the boost clock. The Ryzen 7 1700 includes an AMD Wraith Spire RGB cooling solution, while the 1700X lacks a stock cooling solution.Update 03/06: AMD reached out to us and commented that this is not an official price-change. It could be implemented by local retailers or distributors.

Bungie's space-opera extraordinaire (well, let's hope it is so) Destiny 2 will apparently offer a great level of support for us PC enthusiasts. It has been confirmed through the hands-on portion after yesterday's live-stream that the game will offer some PC-centric features, including support for up to 4K resolutions, ultra-widescreen support, an adjustable FOV, and uncapped frame-rates for those of you who like to live on the edge. These features, however, make it likely that cross-play between PC, XBOX and PlayStation versions of the game won't be possible, if the added speed and precision of the mice and keyboard options over their gamepad counterparts wasn't enough already. Additionally, it has been confirmed that the game will be distributed through Blizzard (formerly Battle.net), which makes a resounding business sense. Why would Activision distribute its game through Steam, having its profits capped by 30%, when they already have the infrastructure to support a game of this magnitude? Sadly, it has been confirmed that the PC version will be delayed, not being launched on September 8th like the console versions.

There was already some hands-on time with Destiny 2's PC version yesterday. While the PC requirements for the game have not yet been released, I think we can interpret the systems on offer at the stage as an overkill approach to it: the systems featured an Intel Core i7-7700K, 16 GB of Ram, an NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, a 500 GB SSD, and Windows 10, which powered an Acer Predator XB271HK monitor (4K, IPS, G-Sync screen.) Though the fact the game was running at over 60 FPS on 4K with the above configuration does speak to relatively mild performance requirements.